I jumped as the wraith’s claw slammed against the glass. I’d warded Lunaris, but the wraith treated my wards like guidelines rather than rules. The shimmer of their magic cast reflections across the paper plane as the wraith tested them.
I drew as quickly as I dared. I couldn’t risk messing up. One irregular line, an illegible smudge, could render the spell useless.
“How is Coill Darragh spelled?” I asked.
The wraith’s claw penetrated the glass, webbed cracks fracturing through the wards.
“I’m dyslexic!” Kessian said. “C-O-I-L— Shit, one L or two? I have to look it up.”
Spelling it wrong would ruin the spell. It wouldn’t work. Five claws like sickles jutted through the glass of Lunaris’s windscreen, incorporeal enough to penetrate without shattering it. They’d feel plenty corporeal cutting our throats.
Kessian tapped rapidly on his phone. The service out here would be terrible; it always was in rural places. I put a hand to my ear. If I had to use the amulet …
The blank voids of the wraith’s eyes rolled toward Kessian.
“C-O-I-L-L—” Kessian read.
I hurriedly wrote down what he said.
“D-A-R-R-A-G-H.”
I finished writing, flattened the plane, and shoved it through Lunaris’s heating vent.
At the same time, the wraith lunged, and before the teleportation spell ferried us to safety, inky black claws shattered the wards and sank into Kessian’s chest.
Chapter 10
Lunaris’s engine whirred like helicopter blades, a steadywhomp, whomp, whomprattling my teeth. The wraith shook, too, its form flickering like an old television losing signal, its furious screech dying as if we’d changed the channel.
The road, hedgerows, and sprawling rapeseed fields vanished, replaced by a buzzing miasma of magic like a black sky with far too many stars. The teleportation spell sucked us out of Shearwater and spat us out—
Somewhere else, presumably Coill Darragh, but my eyes weren’t on the landscape outside, they were on Kessian.
He clutched his chest, breathing hard and staring down at it. No blood leaked from between his fingers, but I still said, “Are you hurt? Let me see.”
I pried his shaking hands away, but he looked unharmed, his shirt intact. I thoughtlessly pushed it up to examine his chest and found it completely unblemished. His top surgery scars were the only sign he’d ever had an injury there.
In a shaky voice, Kessian said, “Trying to get me out of my clothes at a time like this?”
“I thought it was going to rip your heart out.”
“Assuming I had a heart to begin with?”
“Shut up. This is serious. How do you feel?”
The sweaty look of relief on his face turned inward. Slowly, his gaze strayed out the window to the world beyond. On his passenger side, I could make out a road wending between the hills into a village of thatched roofs and smoking chimney stacks, embraced by the arms of the forest around it. Judging by the stone obelisk on the side of the road, we were just outside Coill Darragh. If I concentrated, I could almost hear the low thrum of the ward magic walling us out.
Kessian gave his head a shake. “I feel … fine. Honestly, I’m as surprised as you are.”
I absolutely would look that gift horse in the mouth. I didn’t believe the wraith had touched him without leaving some kind of mark. I shuffled into the living room in search of my tithe belt and retrieved a few dried yew berries and larkspur leaves. While not the most adept witch, I’d learned the things I needed to survive. I pressed the tithes into Kessian’s heart and cast a spell to detect magic, hexes, curses, poisons, anything malicious the wraith might have left.
“Stick out your tongue,” I said.
With a quizzical look, Kessian did. There was nothing there. If the wraith had left anything harmful, runes would have appeared on Kessian’s tongue.
I slumped back in the driver’s seat, less panicked but no less concerned. “Well, you’re not in anyimminentdanger, but I still think you should see a doctor,” I said.
“We’re here for you, remember? Let’s worry about one thing at a time.”
