“Might as well rip off the plaster,” Kessian said. “I’ll be right here.”
“It might be easier if you weren’t.” He looked stung, so I raced to add, “I’m afraid you’ll get hurt.”
“I survived Bowen’s Wane. What’s a wraith got on that? And if it drags me off, I don’t have to worry about finding a home anymore.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Sorry.”
I wasn’t good at reading people. That was academic at this point. It wasn’t that I didn’t notice a change in someone’s mood and demeanor, it was that I so rarely could figure out where that change had come from.
I caught a chilliness in Kessian’s tone that hadn’t been there before, but I must have imagined it, because a moment later he said with his usual confidence, “Let’s catch a wraith.”
The only thing left to do was cast the spell. As I called upon my magic, drawing deep, Kessian laced his fingers with mine and squeezed.
One rune around the sigil’s perimeter lit up, blue as bioluminescent algae. Slowly, one by one, each rune blazed alive. Beside me, Kessian’s magic flared, too. A surge of power went through us both, and the slow illumination of the sigil sped up, each rune lighting the others in a domino chain, until the inside of the shed was so bright I had to close my eyes.
I opened them again once the glow died down. The sigil frosted into the ground stayed crisp and poised. All it needed was a prisoner.
But one didn’t appear.
“The sigil’s alive. The trap worked, didn’t it?” Kessian said.
“The trap did. The summoning didn’t.”
“Maybe it takes a minute?”
We waited with measured breaths, but the shadows didn’t stir, the air didn’t saturate with cold and damp.
The wraith wasn’t coming.
Chapter 23
We reported back to my family on our failure. The reception was a mix of disappointment it hadn’t worked and relief no one else had been hurt in the attempt.
With nothing left to do but go to sleep, I bid my family goodnight and started toward Lunaris, but Kessian didn’t follow.
“Maybe we shouldn’t risk sleeping together tonight,” he said.
“Why?”
“After Amelia … I don’t want to have any more of those dreams.”
There was more to it, but I couldn’t fathom what. I hadn’t imagined his chilliness earlier, and it chipped at a chink in my newly donned confidence. I felt like I’d done something wrong.
“I’ll see you in the afternoon at the dress fitting?” he said.
“And the morning for the autopsy.”
He shivered. “Right. Of course. I’ll see you then.”
“Goodnight.” I leaned in to kiss him, and he turned so my lips brushed his cheek instead.
Definitely hadn’t imagined it. He was giving me the cold shoulder. A hairline crack splintered through my heart as I watched him go.
I had run out of anything to eat and had to make a trip to the newsagents, since anything with proper food had long shut. After picking up a handful of granola bars, I found my gaze lingering on the bottles of liquor stocked behind the clerk. In a moment of masochistic optimism, Iasked for a bottle of gin based on the barren hope Kessian would join me for a drink next time I asked. If I had the courage to ask again.
Lunaris had two cups of tea waiting when I got in. She seemed just as bewildered as me that Kessian hadn’t come. I could understand the reason he gave, but I didn’t think it comprised the whole reason, and it hurt more than I dared admit to tuck myself into bed alone, wondering why—right after I’d let him in—he’d let himself out.
