The scorn in my voice cut through the air like a bite. I expected protest, but Penny only nodded. “I know it is.” His gaze dropped, and I followed it to his waist, where his scarred fingers curled into fists. “My family and I…” He swallowed audibly. “We’re not particularly fond of fire.”
My eyes lingered there briefly before returning to his face. “That isn’t my problem.”
I thought he would give up and leave. Instead, he stepped forward, leaning his weight against the door to ensure it stayed open. One part of me admired his persistence; the other part wanted to hit him.
“If you could just tell me where to go…” His voice gained strength as if he’d dug inside himself and found his resolve. “Ineedto get him back.”
I snorted. “There’s no getting those bones back. Unless you somehow found your way inside their compound, your father’s gone and bound to Eeus. All that’s left to do is pray for his soul.”
A lot of good that would do. I’d given up praying for my own soul a decade ago. Some things were simply too far gone.
Penny’s face crinkled in thought. After a moment, he took a deep breath and drew himself to his full height, half a head shorter than me. “Then tell me how to get in there.”
It felt like someone flushed ice into my veins, and I gripped the doorframe so tightly my knuckles went white.
“There’s no just ‘getting in,’” I said, my voice low and sharp, “just like there’s no just ‘getting out.’ You willneverfind where they’re building the Vessel unless you’re one of them.”
Penny sniffed, trying to hide the fear that crept across his face, but it was obvious; he was out of his depth and out of his mind.
“Then I’ll become one of them,” he said at length.
I reeled back, a breath away from laughing in his face. “You don’t show up somewhere and declare yourself a Bone Man,” I said. “There are rites. Rituals. Each one darker than the last. You don’t have that in you.” I lookedhim over again. He was young, all right. No more than twenty-five with a smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks and a glint in his eyes. In another time or place, it might have been mirth. Now, it looked like madness.
Penny leaned harder against the door, his expression desperate. “Ihaveto do this. This is my fault, and I have to make it right. I know you were one of them once, and I’m not going anywhere until you agree to help me.”
I leaned in as well and gritted my teeth. “Go. Away.” My fingers flexed around the handle of the knife held down at my side. “I willnotbe turned into some kind of monster becauseyoumade a mistake and don’t know when to leave well enough alone.”
Penny’s brows pinched together, and he slumped. “Please,” he said, “teach me how to become one of them. I just need a bit of guidance.”
“No,” I said, finally seeming to repel him with the sharpness of my tone.
He sighed and straightened, taking his weight off the door. “I meant what I said. I won’t leave until you help me.”
Without another word, I kicked his foot away from the jamb and slammed the door, then threw the locks for good measure. I stood for several minutes, rooted to the spot, and waited to hear him descend the steps.
With a growl, I jammed the knife into the door frame, burning out the last flare of my anger and leaving the blade buried an inch in the wood. I turned toward the den and rubbed my hands over my face.
“Gods, I need a guard dog,” I murmured again to the silence of the old house. “I need one yesterday.”
It seemed that, despite my best efforts, my reputation had caught up to me. I’d been hiding since I was old enough to estrange myself from my father, hoping toescape the stigma of being a Bone Man’s son, but no distance was great enough. The stories followed me. Sooner or later, someone spread the word that there was a heathen in their midst, and they drove me out.
For the last four years, the residents of Forstford had tolerated my presence because I kept my head down, but this made the second time someone showed up looking for me. The townspeople’s goodwill could only stretch so far. If Penny raised a fuss, they could decide my skills in the forge weren’t worth the hassle of people chasing rumors and finding their way to my door. Maybe it was time to move before that happened, before I lost everything again.
But the truth was, I liked this place. I liked this house with all its old charm and broken pieces; I liked the darkness of the evergreen forest beyond my back door; I liked the warmth of the summer sun as it streamed through the western windows and into my den; I liked the solitude and the quiet broken only by birdsong in the summer and the howl of coyotes on cold winter nights. I didn’t look forward to having to leave and find someplace new.
I was tired of running.
The prospect of delving into my past, of unearthing the horrors I’d witnessed and the gruesome means by which the Bone Men did their work, turned my stomach. I’d spent so much time trying to forget that I couldn’t imagine trying to remember again.
So, I spent the rest of the day drunk. I couldn’t bear to think about all I’d seen as a child of the Bone Men and all that I’d been told I’d one day do, so I sought to numb myself with whiskey. Unfortunately, the drink had the opposite effect, leaving me with less control of my mind while I drowned in memories I’d fought so long to bury.
I remembered standing in a graveyard on a balmy summer night while my father labored to dig up the soft,damp earth. I was a boy of seven, both hands clasped around the large brass ring atop a lantern, struggling to hold it aloft enough to aim the light where it was needed.
“A bit higher, Kit.” My father stood and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of dirt in its wake. His smile was so ordinary, so disarming, that I did as I was told and held the light ever higher.
It felt like he toiled for ages before the shovel thumped against wood. He motioned for me to set the lantern down. “Help me lift it out. There’s a good lad.”
The two of us hefted the pine box from the dirt and eased it up the small wooden ramp we’d set into the foot of the grave. The stench wafting from the coffin was something that had taken years to get used to, but I barely noticed it anymore, even when the heat of the humid night intensified it.
