Rascal obeys. He snaps his jaw shut and runs behind me, tail tucked. My eyes flash to the creature.
“What do you want from us?” Each word feels feral in my mouth. An uncontrolled beast of fear and fright.
She cocks her neck to look at me, bones peeking from dry flesh. One eye warbles in its socket, as though trying to focus on me.
“Little Reaper wants to know. Little Reaper wants to see.” The voice is a singsong of slurred words that rattle in my ears.
I set my jaw. “What do I want to see?”
The shrouded creature on the left of the woman hovers closer. It smells of rot, even more than its companions. Wet soil turned up to cure in sunlight. It slides its lipless mouth open—nothing but a fleshy, pink gash.
“Little Reaper has a deal to make.”
I cannot move my body for fear. Every muscle tense, every tendon a line of shrill ice.
“I am done making deals here,” I say.
After a moment, the creature to the right sidles closer. This one almost appears like a child. Its skin is more intact than the others, smoother. Its eyes are milky, a line of film over what once might have been blue. When it opens its mouth to speak, a tongue flops out, pink as a newborn baby.
“Ask us a question, Little Reaper. Ask us a question, and we might set you free.”
The voice is a child’s lilt, the echo of tin bells. It sends my stomach swimming, and my fingers tighten against Bram’s.
I open my mouth, trying to think of something to ask. Anything really. What does it matter? But it is Bram’s voice that fills the space.
“Adelaide, don’t. It’s a trap.”
The childlike creature frowns, lines deepening in its decaying flesh. “The dead man knows. The dead man will not let us play our games.”
“Hush,” says the one in the middle. “There is no time for games.” Her listless gaze pierces me. “We must bring her to the Lady.”
My eyes flash to Bram, whose own fill with recognition at the name. Lady Black. Hope begins to ease within the spaces inside me that the fear will not. Perhaps Ransom’s mother will know where my own is.
The Haunts smile. In tandem. No lips, full lips, young lips cutting across their blank faces, like a finger in soil, ready to sow.
The center one reaches out one hand to me, the fingers limp like worms. “You will fly with us, Little Reaper. You will fly with us, as will the dead man and the hellhound. We must bring you to the Lady. We must do as she commands.”
“We must do as she commands,” the others echo, leaving me with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
But this is how we will locate Ransom, how we will hopefully find my mother. And a flight on the shadow of the Haunts is surely a quicker way to travel than our own two feet.
I glance at Bram, who seems like he would rather spend an eternity here than ride a Haunt, but I grab his hand. “We can do this. It’s going to be fine.”
The look on his face proves his thoughts do not match mine. He pulls me close, his lips hot on my ear. “I have not heard of Haunts acting this way, serving someone outside Erybrus. Whatever this is, it can’t be good.”
Anger cuts through me. “You promised to help me find my mother, and I promised Ransom to help him find his. I’m going with them. You’re welcome to stay.”
I turn back to the Haunts. The one in the middle widens her smile.
“Will the Little Reaper come?”
I swallow the lump at the back of my throat and lift my hand. “I will.”
Her fingers slosh against mine, each one a wriggling, writhing thing. I weave my hand into hers. The breath whooshes from my body when I am sucked into the shadow. It swirls around me, midnight black. No light. I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out.
When I pound against the shadows, they only mold around my fist. There is a storm of noise, a crashing of cold wind in my ears. I crouch down—on what, I have no idea—but the shadows beneath me feel solid. There is a tearing sound, the scent of iron, and then nothing but the gentle shushing of wind in my ears.
I curl up against the shadow, shivering in the blackness and gloom. Even here—whereverhereis—the light of the red sky and the sallow moon do not penetrate. Black, red, white. The only real colors I have known for days.
