“I know our last conversation didn’t go as either of us imagined a reunion would go,” Zera said. “For my part, I apologize. I could have come visit you sooner as well.”
Still, nothing.
“Are you here?”
Perhaps she’d moved.
Or Zera could have beaten her home. Shehadtaken a rather direct route.
She tried the door. It creaked and clanked, and, to Zera’s surprise, swung open. Stepping forward, she peered in. The lock mechanism swung free, barely held by one screw. Whatever Kreya had been up to, it hadn’t been home repair projects. Or security. “Helloooo? Kreya?”
Her voice echoed up the dank stairwell. It was a toss-up which was thicker: the shadows or the cobwebs. As Zera stepped inside, she tried not to touch anything. She noticed a hatchlike door, presumably to a cellar, as well as a door to a shadow-laden bathroom. She was distinctly disinterested in viewing how clean or unclean it was. Lifting the hem of her coat, she climbed up the stairs.
One turn up, she shrieked.
A spiderlike creature made of metal, cloth, and bone was scrubbing one of the steps. She stopped shrieking when she realized it wasn’t attacking or even trying to move off its beloved step. She wondered if itcouldmove. It had worn through the stone so badly that the step was more bowl than stair.
As Zera carefully stepped around, it paused and “looked” up at her. It had no eyes, but it twisted its body so its empty metal eye sockets pointed toward her.
“You’re doing a fabulous job,” she told it.
It purred and kept scrubbing.
Exhaling, she tiptoed past it. All right, so Kreya had made a cleaning construct that had malfunctioned and had just left it there for possibly a decade. That didn’t mean her friend—Ex-friend,Zera corrected herself—was in mortal danger.
That construct was a prime example of why she preferred being a bone wizard to being a bone maker. The power in her talismans was temporary, burning itself out in a few beautiful and pure minutes of glory or, if she was bragging about her skills, hours of use. But a construct made by a bone maker could linger creepily for years before it eventually wore down. Unnatural things.
She was huffing by the time she reached the next level. It was stifling inside the stairwell, and it stank like three-day-old fish left out on the table. She felt the stench and the dust and grime seeping into her skin.When I get back home, I’m taking a bath that lasts for three days,she promised herself.
Which better be sooner rather than later.
“Kreya?” she called as she pushed against the door and poked her head in.
Zera expected more darkness and grime, but this room was light and airy and surprisingly clean. It had high rafters, plusseveral windows with open shutters that let the sunlight stream in. A canopied bed in the center was piled with linens.
“Are you asleep?”
Tiptoeing in, Zera crossed to the bed—
She halted as three shadowy shapes lurched away from the walls. They were murmuring wordlessly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement on the rafters above: more of them, doll-like monstrosities made of scraps of fabric scuttling over the beams.
Sucking in air, she let out a proper bloodcurdling scream, while her hands jabbed into her pockets to find talismans. The dolls shrieked back and rushed toward her, and she heard footsteps on the stairs.
A doll latched onto her leg.
Still screaming heartily, Zera activated a strength talisman and flung the doll across the room. It smashed into the wall just as Kreya rushed through the door.
The dolls halted as soon as they saw Kreya. Clustering around the foot of the bed, they chittered at her. Kreya’s face contorted in horror as if Zera had slaughtered a child. “Did you hurt him?”
Zera glanced at the doll she’d chucked across the room. It was collapsed, motionless, on the floor. “Um... is self-defense an excuse? Because it attacked me first.”
But Kreya didn’t rush to the doll. Instead she ran to the bed. She examined the linens from top to bottom, feeling along them, and Zera drifted closer, keeping an eye on the freaky dolls. They hung back for now, clustered together.
The linens looked...
“Kreya, what’s that?”
It looked as if the linens were covering a body.
