I didn’t say anything—didn’t let his sharp tone affect my response. I understood his anxieties colored his tone.
He tensed his jaw and swallowed. “That’s not how I meant it,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you to. You know that.”
“I know. But I didn’t mean that I don’t want to. I’m just afraid I won’t be able.” I sucked in a deep breath, trying to push away the hissing in my head, but the noise wouldn’t budge. “I don’t know if I can tap into my gift. The noise won’t stop. I can’t focus on any voices.”
Charles wrapped an arm around me and pulled me against his chest. His breath warmed my scalp as he rested his chin there. “Let’s turn back. We’ll find you a place to stay tonight while Adrian and I go.”
I pulled away, cutting my gaze toward him. “No. I need to at least try.”
“It’s not something you can try, Sophia. If your gift fails now, you’ll have no way to protect yourself.”
Adrian put a hand on Charles’ shoulder and looked to me. “You’ve only recently learned how to tap into your gift. It’s natural the stress of this situation would cause regression. But if you want to get through this, you have to push your worries away. Where we are going, there is no room for hesitation.”
“You think I can do this?”
“Yes.”
“And you?” I asked, turning to Charles.
“I don’t want you to,” he said.
I pressed my teeth together. “Do you think I can?”
He gazed solemnly into my eyes. “I know it.”
With a resolute nod, I started up our path again. I could do this. Adrian believed it, Charles believed it, and now I just needed to believe it, too.
I tucked my head against Charles’ shoulder, the old buildings of the inner city hanging back as we pressed forward. A few abandoned hovels perforated the desolate streets and, beneath the moonlight, patches of grass fought for life among the dusty knolls scattering the fields. Barbed wire fences stretched along the horizon and birds soared overhead, gliding with their saw-edged wings cutting through the air.
Our dirt trail, dry as sawdust, wound toward a cemetery surrounded by towering, decrepit stone walls. A rusty lock grasped the latch of a wrought-iron gate.
We walked past the neglected gate and followed the cemetery wall around the corner. A ways down, Adrian stopped and pointed at one of the stones.
“Here,” he said. “My parents made this entrance before they died. No one else should know of it. If we climb over the walls, we’ll set off the sensors.”
“This place doesn’t look like it would have sensors,” I said.
Adrian gave me a quieting glare, then turned back to study the stones. Several had symbols, and, after tracing one in particular, he dug a large foreign coin from his pocket and lined it up with a small, encircled half moon.
The wall opened like a sliding door, the top still securely in place. The narrow entrance opened enough for us to squeeze through sideways, then Adrian closed the passage behind us, the walls crushing small pieces of debris as the stones settled back into place.
Light pollution from the distant city reflected off the sky, creating a pale luminescence over the burial grounds. Though my eyes had adjusted on the walk over, Adrian and Charles wove through the gravestones in a pattern I found hard to emulate.
Thousands of headstones cluttered in the dirt, their crumbling limestone spreading as far as the horizon. I tried not to breathe through my nose, but I could still taste the rotting, septic odor filling my lungs.
Charles stopped beside me. His eyes were darker than usual, opaque as the ocean’s murkiest waters. “Are you ready?”
There was no being ‘ready’. There was only doing what needed to be done. “We need to get your family back,” I said.
“Our family,” he said. His eyes searched mine. “No matter what, do not come after us. It’s too dangerous.”
I offered a noncommittal, “Mmhmm.”
“I mean it, Sophia.”
“I know.” Something chalky coated my fingers and palm, and I realized I’d leaned on a gravestone. I snapped my hand away and wiped the dust on my pants.
Adrian cleared his throat. “Follow me.”
He ushered us toward a cavernous ossuary. The musk of animals stuck in my nose. Human skeletons surrounded a support column and slumped against the walls near age-bleached skulls stacked on piles of ribs and femurs.
These were the remains of spirits who had not been left to rest—those who had been buried in temporary graves and then excavated, their bones crammed in a hollow room due to a lack of burial plots.
This was no place for performing rituals.
Adrian looked from me to the ossuary and back again. “I know,” he said, “but it’s the only shelter nearby. You can’t sit in the middle of the graveyard.”
“What if they find me?”