Our argument from the changing room still fizzled between us then, but he meant it as encouragement.
Carefully, tucking myself as far away from the edge of the sigil as I could, I turned to face the creature.
I’d never appreciated its size until now. It towered like a plume of smoke to the ceiling.
“What do you want?”
I didn’t expect it to answer. It had never spoken before. Smoke boiled from the place its mouth would be, but the sounds it emitted were not human.
“I’m trying to help,” I said. “I’m trying to find the one who poisoned the strid, who killed my grandad. Can you tell me who that is?”
Its smoky breath fumed, and something glowed in the place its heart would be. It gave its head a shake and slammed a claw against the barrier of light. More sparks flew. I jumped and Kessian’s hands steadied me.
The wraith seemed frustrated. Well, the feeling was mutual.
“It would be a lot easier to help you if you stopped killing all the people I love. Why do you do it? What purpose could it possibly serve?”
The shadows leapt. For a moment the wraith seemed to split, like two frames of a film overlaid, and the glow at its center magnified, pulsing like a beating heart.
“Keep talking. You’re getting through to something,” Kessian said.
I hardly needed the encouragement. I’d kept all of this bottled up. Now it poured out of me. “I hated living alone! Because of you, I’ve had no one for years. I was never the best with people, but I still liked them, and I only got worse at talking to them without practice. I miss my dad. I miss Laurelie. I miss Amelia. Because of you I’ll never have them back, and now you won’t even give me a single, solitaryfuckingclue how tofix thisso I can finally come home!”
The shadows rattled and burst apart around something emerging from the glowing hole in the wraith’s chest.
It was a hand, dripping with umbral ichor and grasping toward us. It was—
It was human.
The wraith flickered again, and this time the two frames were markedly different. The wraith in one, a human figure in the other, tearing free of the wraith’s body like its ribs were a cage.
Heedless of the danger, I reached out and grasped the hand. The wraith screeched and reared its head, sparks flying from around the sigil.
I kept pulling, but I needed more room for leverage. “Kessian! Can you sneak past it now?”
Kessian waved an arm through the sigil, but the wraith was too occupied in my tug-o-war with it. He limped as quickly as his injured leg allowed, holding on to the wall for support.
From the doorway, he said, “Now you.”
Holding on to the arm protruding from the wraith’s chest, I swung my weight to the right, around the sigil, until I was halfway out the door.
My grip almost slipped, but I reeled back, put a foot against the doorjamb, and pulled.
The wooden shed creaked ominously, then the figure trapped in the wraith burst free in a pool of liquid shadow, which melted and friedin the sigil like bacon fat. The figure was a girl judging by its shape. I dragged her the rest of the way out of the hut to safety. She raised her head, the darkness bleeding away from her face, soaking into the earth and revealing her. I recognized her face.
It was Amelia.
Chapter 26
We pulled her a safe distance from the shed, where the wraith wailed and threw itself at the boundary of the sigil like a thing possessed.
Amelia, coughing and shivering, backpedaled in the grass until I managed to grab her under the arms and get her to her feet, searching her for any sign of injury. She was soaked to the skin, still wearing the baggy shorts and button-up she’d had on the day she died, now stained with silt.
Shivering, she grasped my shoulders and looked between Kessian and me, then the wraith, which had gone eerily still, staring at Amelia like she was a lost meal.
“You’re okay,” I said. “You’re safe.”
Once the words were out, the relief hit me. It took her legs out from under her, because she collapsed into my arms with a sob, hugging me so tight the water soaked through both our clothes.
