Bram turns, eyes flashing. “Like hell you are.”
“If you haven’t noticed, Hell is exactly where we are,” I spit. “And I’m not being left alone. Especially not when…”
I think back to my mother—rather the thing beneath my mother’s skin. Wearing faces that don’t belong to her, half-smiles of dead girls in dirt. Flowers in her hair, like dying stars.
I move past Bram, my body still hazy from everything I have seen. He says nothing but follows.
His footfalls crunch in the icy snow. While we move toward the church, my courage subsides. It leaves me like steam from a teacup, and I am glad for Rascal at my side, glad for the warmth of his fur to rid my fingers of this wretched cold.
Behind the stained-glass windows, there is a soft, orange glow. Someone, or something, has indeed lit a fire in Bram’s makeshift ring of stones. He is at my back, and I swallow the fear slipping up my throat.
“What should we do?” I ask.
“All that there is left to do.” He presses past me and pushes on the door.
It does not budge.
Something scampers inside—the sound of feet on stone, the shushing of cloth. I bend low and fit my eye to the tarnished keyhole. Rascal growls in my ear.
Shadows shift inside the church. A fire crackles near the altar, a pile of blankets beside that. A pair of brown boots.
A strange sense of familiarity tangles through my bones. My sight goes black, and an eye matches my own. A hazel eye.
Breath whooshes from my lungs, and I fall backward, clambering up against Bram while I rattle the door.
“What? What is it?” Bram’s voice is stringent.
I tear at the wood, not caring when splinters break off and sink into my skin. “Clara.”
Bram blinks stupidly at me for a moment, and then his fingers are at the door, rattling the hinges. “Clara, it’s Bram and Adelaide,” he hisses. “Please let us in.”
I wait for a reply, that voice I know and love so well.
“How do I know you aren’t…aren’t the dead things?”
A sob cracks against my ribs. “We aren’t, Clara. We can explain everything.”
There is silence. The wind stirs, bringing with it a scent of iron. My eyes flash to Bram.
Gods below and above, let us in.
There is the metallic shushing of a bar being drawn back, a latch clicking. The door swings open. Clara stands in the frame, the glow of the fire bright as morning sun behind her. Dark curls lie in tendrils over her face, dirt smudging her cheeks, tear stains streaking in lines.
It takes Clara all of a moment to throw herself into my arms, body shaking. I say nothing, only stroke her hair softly. Bram hurries us into the church and secures the door behind us.
“Clara,” I whisper, reaching for her face. “Are you all right? How are you…how are youhere?”
She presses a finger to her lips, eyes frantically glancing to the nearest window. “They can hear you. Every word. They listen for it, crack their hands against the walls until the very ground is quaking. Sometimes, they get in and I have to hide.” Her face darkens, turns to me. “Prove you are not one of them, Adelaide.”
I pull the bell from the fragmented folds of my gown. It catches gold in the fire glow. I run a finger along the rim of the sharp-edged dome. Pain stings through me, and the blood beads like licorice drops on my skin.
“There,” I say, holding it up to the light. “Not dead. Not exactly.”
Clara hesitates, takes a hold of my wrist, drags a finger through my blood, and rolls it on her thumb. I wait for her to balk, to spit curses at the sight of my illness. My Reaper’s blood. But she doesn’t. She only turns her eyes back to mine.
“Fine. Not exactly dead. But what about him?” She points to Bram, who is crouching over the fire, hurrying for something in his satchel.
For some reason unbeknownst to me, I smile. “Oh, he’s very dead. But he will not hurt us.”
