It’s a part of you, Briar had said.That’s how it can get through your wards.
The wraith took a halting step forward.
Edwin didn’t retreat. “I won’t fight you. I’ve been at this long enough to see that some things are a choice, some are preordained, and some seem a peculiar mix of both. But I am old, and I think of my available choices, I’ve made them all.” He huffed dryly. “Some I’m far less proud of than others.”
The wraith let out a hungry, screeching noise like a rusted hinge, drifting more boldly toward Grandad. He watched its progress, the tremble of his fingers the only sign he was afraid of his impending death.
“Will you make it quick?” he asked.
Then the wraith did something very, very strange.
It knelt.
Its limbs twitched, and at times it seemed to fight itself, like a barely domesticated beast bending to the yoke of some greater power. It reached out a talon toward Grandad’s heart.
He stared at it, his expression turning from confusion to enlightenment. Even something like love.
“I see,” he said. “I must pass on the mantle to you, or it will go to him.”
“Does he mean Marlowe?” I whispered.
“I’m ready,” Grandad said.
The wraith, still jerking like a dog at its leash, bowed its head and gored Grandad through the chest on its antlers. Rather than blood, magic surged from the wound, a great rip current of it. It twined up the wraith’s horns, lit its skull from within, made a skeleton glow amongst the smoke. In a brief flash, a scrawny, adolescent figure was silhouetted within.
The magic dissipated as quickly as it came. The wraith stood. Grandad sagged to the floor, gaze unfixed, a distant smile on his face.
He was dead.
I couldn’t breathe. Kessian held my hand tightly. The slats of the door painted shadows like the bars of a cage over his face. I must have looked pale or wrecked or something, because he put his arms around me.
“Mum was right,” I whispered. “Itwasmy fault.”
“No, Tal.”
“If I hadn’t come here—”
“You heard Edwin. He’d been waiting for this day. He probably dreamed it a thousand times.”
The wraith still stood over its victim, fingers clenching and unclenching.
Kessian shifted his weight, sore from standing still so long. Something crunched underfoot—a piece of dried pasta, its hard shell cracking apart.
The wraith’s head turned sharply toward the pantry.
I froze. Kessian did, too.
The wraith’s head tilted with interest, birdlike as it stalked a few steps toward the closed doors. The light through the slats painted Kessian’s face in a mask of terror before the wraith’s shadow blocked it out.
We had no place to run. We could burst out and try to make a run for it, but the wraith occupied the entire breadth of the kitchen.
It advanced a few more steps. Kessian wound his arms tighter around me. I held him, too, pressing a silent kiss into his hair.
The wraith’s shadows flickered, briefly dispersing like a swarm of bees. The flash of a hazel-green eye shone through.
Then the sound came of a key turning in the lock of the front door. It opened, and the sound of voices drifted in. I recognized Lettie’s background nattering, Amelia’s surly, monosyllabic responses. Then Marlowe’s voice saying, “Roast smells lovely.”
I nearly burst from the pantry to warn them, but before I could, the wraith’s head whipped around as it listened. It lunged for the flue above the oven, clambering into the narrow gaps like a spider.
