Rascal trots to Ransom’s side, his tail hanging loosely, and Bram offers me an arm. I slip my hand into the crook of his elbow, still half-surprised to feel the solidity of him beneath my skin. He is cold, and when I touch him, he flinches. Almost as if my warmth is something he hasn’t experienced in a long time.
With each step toward the back of the church, my skin sears, and droplets of blood press out against the stitches. Through a small door, we enter a room with only a single window, half hung in shredded velvet, the walls stained almost black with age. There is a makeshift cot tucked in one corner, a piling of old hymnals and candles beside it. On the walls hang dusty candlesticks, milky wax dripping from the brass.
If we weren’t in a place of half-dead souls, I would say it is almost cozy.
Bram leads me to the cot and peels back the velvet covering, which is nothing more than another curtain. I crawl beneath it, my bones stiff, and lay my head on the pillow of leaves tucked into a sack.
It smells like home, like the trees beyond the river. Not this one, this upside-down place of dead and dying, but the true, yellowing trees swallowing the river in Rixton.
Bram settles on the floor beside me, his back against the stone. “I can’t believe you’re really here.”
“What do you mean?” I tuck a hand under the pillow, my gaze matching his own.
“I just…Well, I didn’t think you would come, after seeing me in your room. Thought you’d think it was all a dream or something.” There is a hitch in his throat, and he looks away. “Gods below and above, it’s just been so long.”
My stomach aches when I think about it. This dead man, trapped in this place of rotting souls. “Well, I’m glad I came.”
He smiles at me, a soft kind of thing. “Me too.”
We stay in silence for a moment, the wind outside the only sound. I stare at the ceiling, but it is so high above us I can barely make it out. Father never allowed me passage to the vestry, so everything is strange. Even here in the rowan wood.
“How do you know when it’s night?” I ask, breaking the silence.
Bram looks up at me. “What do you mean?”
“Out there, in the church, you told Ransom to take the first watch of the night. But isn’t the moon always out here?”
Bram nods, understanding. “It took me a while to figure it out after I died. There are moments when the Haunts are more dormant, retreating to shadows. I call it night, though for all I know it could be morning. When they stopped beating against the doors, I figured the evening must be drawing close.” He nods to my leg. “We could move now if it weren’t for that leg. You should rest.”
I digest the information. Haunts, souls of the dead who have not yet crossed over. Skin morphing into shadow, eyes turning white as marble. The pain in my leg beats a dull thrum.
“Can I ask you a question?” The words leave my mouth in a breath.
Bram nods.
“Why didn’t you flinch when you saw my blackened blood?”
Bram’s eyes penetrate me. Like he can see every vein, every muscle, every bone. My breath catches.
“I have seen my fair share of Reapers these last ten years, Adelaide,” he says. “Their blood is no cause for alarm.”
The words strike hollows into my bones.Reaper’s blood?So, it is true. The air turns hot in my lungs. I am cursed by Erybrus, already sold to his side. But what does it mean?
I bottle the thought and press it to the back of my mind. No sense in worrying about things I have no control over. Instead, I focus on something Icaninfluence. Or at least explain.
“Are you angry I brought Ransom? He’s harmless.”
Bram curls his lip. “A better word, I think, would be useless. He ran from those Haunts.”
“Anyone in their right mind would run from those things, Bram. Did you see them?”
He is silent, one arm thrown over a knee while he studies the nothingness of the wall in front of us. I look around the room.
What a stupid thing it was of me to say. Of course, he has seen them in his ten years of making the vestry of my father’s church—whatever versionthis is—his home. Alone and running, always fleeing from those creatures. Those monsters in the wood.
I swallow. Have I been seeing Haunts all my life? My monsters of teeth and shadows? A shiver licks my spine, and I snuggle deeper against the rough cot at my back, my leg throbbing.
“I’m sorry. That was a careless thing for me to say.”
