And now one was in their midst, disguised as Skeal Eile. She had no doubt this was what she and Brickey had faced. And suddenly she stopped where she was, appalled.
That old man, the ragpicker, trying to charm her into revealing what she knew about Sider and his talisman. That old man, who had threatened her in his chillingly soft-voiced, terrifyingly confident way, letting her know that if she crossed him she would live to regret it. She could still feel herself wilting under the force of his words, only just managing to hold on.
Skeal Eile was only a pawn in this, not the instigator she had thought him to be. The eyes gave away the demon within; there was no mistaking it. But the demon had not always been there; if it had, she would have noticed. Sider would have noticed. The demon was new, and it had taken the Seraphic’s form, which was why it had been able to kill her husband so easily, why it could charm the people of her village as the real Seraphic had never been able to do, why it had upended everyone’s lives in a single night with false promises and twisted dreams. He was the reason Arik Siq was free and she was made to appear responsible. He was the cause of everything twisted and bad that had happened.
She almost collapsed with the weight of her revelation. It was a struggle even to continue to walk, to put one foot in front of the other.
She forced herself to start moving faster. She could not afford to be recaptured.
She reached a stretch of deep woods just outside the village and plunged in without slowing, intent on getting through quickly and making her way to higher ground. She was tiring now, no longer able to run, to find the reserves of strength she knew she would need if she were pursued. Once, when she was younger, she could have run all day. Once, when she was with Sider, she had done so, matching him stride for stride, as strong and able as he was, a match for him in every way. What she had lost was a pain she had carried with her ever since. But now, fleeing from the demon, it surfaced with fresh intensity and made her weep.
She staggered to a halt finally, stopping to listen to the stillness. Though she tried, she heard nothing. The night was deep and empty of sound; not even the night birds called out. She took deep breaths to steady herself, thinking that perhaps she had lost him, had left him behind—the demon that pretended at being Skeal Eile, the monster she had feared would continue to track her.
But maybe not. Maybe not.
She swallowed hard and started out again, setting a fresh pace, slow but steady. She was in thick woods and heavy grasses, and she could not go any faster. But perhaps this was fast enough.
“Aislinne? Are you there? You are, aren’t you? I can smell you.”
She felt herself tighten with fear, but she kept going.
“There’s no point in running from me. There’s nowhere you can go that I can’t find you. Why not just put an end to this?”
Somehow, it had managed to find her trail. Somehow, it had closed the gap she thought she had opened between them. She had run so hard, so fast, and yet here it was, almost on top of her. She felt fresh tears run down her cheeks, but she stayed silent, working her way through the trees.
“I will make it quick, if you simply wait for me to come to you. Just give me a word or a sign to let me know you prefer it that way. Your little friend isn’t here to help you anymore. Nor is your foolish husband. Nor the man who carried the black staff until he died at the hands of the Drouj. They’re all gone. You’re all alone.”
She wanted to scream, to shatter his bones with the force of her rage. But she could do nothing to him. She wasn’t even carrying a weapon.
“Aislinne, are you listening? I know you can hear me.”
There was no escaping this creature, yet she must find a way. She tightened her resolve and pressed on, sliding ghostlike through the trees, stepping carefully, silently.
Leave no trace of your passing. Leave no footprint or sign. Stay focused on what is needed. Do not let yourself be swayed by his words. They are only words, and they cannot hurt you.
Yet they did. They cut like knives.
She was deep in the woods now, so far in that she could only barely find her way from one sliver of moonlight to the next, everything gone stifling and dark, layered with shadows. She was infused with a sense of need for haste that she knew she must resist.
One step at a time, she told herself. The demon had gone silent, but she knew it was back there, following doggedly, determined to catch her and put an end to her.
If she was lucky. Much worse, if she was not.
Then a shadow crossed her path just ahead, a glimmer of something unlike real shadows, something not wholly dark but lit from within. She gasped in spite of herself and almost gave way to the fear pressing down on her. But then the shadow disappeared, and she turned away from it.
She blinked uncertainly. She must have imagined it. It wasn’t there now, had barely been there before. Yet something about it—something in the way it moved—was familiar.
“Aislinne?”