Was the wraith calling out to us? Or to more wraiths?
“She’s making noises,” Liam whispered. He was close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body. That comforted me more than it should have.
“Which direction?” he asked quietly.
“I couldn’t tell.” And now I could barely hear over the beating of my own heart. Facing down a wraith on a well-lit street was one thing. Wandering through a dark and abandoned house in a dark and abandoned city was something completely different. I didn’t believe in ghosts; but if I did, I’d have believed they lived here, in this memorial to a different time.
The sound echoed through the house again.
“I’ll go left,” I whispered. “You go right.”
He grabbed my hand. “You’ll stay with me.”
“We don’t have time for that. The house is too big. We go together, we might miss her, and we’ll never find her again in the dark.”
We stood there in silence for a moment. “If you need me, call my name.”
“I will.”
And then he stepped away, letting the chill settle between us again.
I moved to the threshold of the first room, walked inside. I could see the silhouettes of furniture, a mirror above a fireplace that reflected only darkness.
I paused, waited to hear movement, or more sounds, but there was nothing. A breeze blew from a doorway on the other side of the room.
I walked toward it, jumped when I ran into a spiderweb dangling from the ceiling, pushed it away.
The next room was a kitchen. A U-shaped set of cabinets with an island in the middle, a small table and ladder-back chairs on the other side of the room. It still looked clean—no piles of empty cans and bottles. Maybe the looters hadn’t gotten to it.
She came from out of nowhere. Suddenly, she was screaming and lunging as she tried to claw at me, as if she could dig through skin to get to the magic I’d absorbed. She might have run before, but now we were in her territory. We’d cornered her, and she’d protect herself.
I jumped back, moved around the kitchen island, putting the furniture between us, got my first look at her. She was pale and thin, her hair blond and stringy. But I didn’t think she was as far gone as the wraiths on War Night.
“Liam! I found her!”
She opened her mouth, made that sound again. She garbled, part whimper, part moan, part horrible, guttural scream. But I’d have sworn it sounded like an actual word. Something like “context.”
“What did you say?”
“Connnnteshtt!”
It could have been a word, but I wasn’t sure. Couldn’t tell.
“I hear you,” I said, stepping forward. “I’m listening to you, trying to hear what you tell me.”
I put a hand on the gun. Could have drawn it. But I felt too much pity.
Liam had been right. I couldn’t do it. Not against someone who hadn’t been as lucky as me.
But I had other tools. There was a table and chairs to her left. If I could grab one of the chairs, I could use it like a shield. Maybe trap her against the wall until Liam got here with the tranqs.
I felt around for the magic, began to spin it together, to gather it up.
She screamed again, sensing the gathering of magic, the thing she wanted more than anything else in the world, and she rushed me. She didn’t bother going around the island. She vaulted it like an animal, landed on me so we both hit the floor.
Fear tore through me, sharp as her broken and ragged nails. She smelled old and sour, and she looked brittle, but like the War Night wraiths, she was strong, as though magic had concentrated her strength.
She snapped at me, screamed that word—or the sound, or the moan—again and again. I used one hand to try to hold her back, and with the other, I reached out for the chair, pulling power and wood at the same time. But instead of flying toward me, it skittered across the floor, fell over, scraped against hardwood.
She grabbed a lock of my hair, pulled, and yelled again.
“Damn it,” I said against the pain, and reached out for the chair again, pushing all my energy into a final surge of magic.
This time, the chair rushed toward me. I grabbed the back with both hands, used the legs to pry her off me and onto the floor. I scrambled to my feet, using the chair legs to pin her to the floor.
Liam appeared in the doorway in front of us, looked obviously relieved to find me mostly upright and the wraith on the floor, although squirming like a fish.
“When I told you about the tranq, this wasn’t the plan I had in mind.”
I blew the hair from my eyes. “Thank you for pretending this looks like something I planned.”
He went down on a knee beside her, opened the case, pulled out a syringe, and pressed it against her neck. A few more seconds of struggling, and she went visibly limp.
He helped me to my feet. “You’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” I pushed the hair from my face, pulled down the skirt I’d rumpled in the battle, and looked down at the wraith at my feet. “What’s next?”
“Now we take her home.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN