Page 15 of In the Ravenous Dark
“Did my father fight you?”
The dead man regards me. “Like a wildcat. But he lost. And you don’t strike me as—”
With a feral screech, I throw myself at him.
It doesn’t go well. He traps one arm as soon as I claw at him, followed promptly by the other, and then he holds me pinned as I thrash and scream. He cinches me tight against his hard chest with one arm while he cups my head with the other to keep me from biting him—which of course I try to do as soon as he’s close enough. Our stance could almost look intimate.
How is the man so strong, so solid? It isn’t fair. He’s a shade, and I’m supposedly alive, and yet he’s subdued me as easily as if I were a child.
He brings his lips to my ear, and his breath stirs my hair. “I truly am sorry,” he says in a gentle ghost of a voice.
And then he kisses my cheek, which is wet with tears and stuck with strands of my hair. His lips are cool and soft, and yet, for a brief moment, I feel like they’re stealing something vital from me. But then I don’t feel anything anymore, because the dead man is gone from the chamber, and so am I.
5
Iawake in dimness. For a moment, I’m wildly afraid I’ve come to on the stone slab, and someone will be washing my body, and I’ll be dead…
But I’m only in a room with heavy curtains drawn. A ridiculously opulent room, I realize as my eyes adjust. My bed has posts like twining trees with real leaves and flowers laced in a canopy overhead, and nearby sits a wooden desk shaped like a blooming rose.
I sit up, and a wave of dizziness hits me. Where on earth am I? Andwhohas put me in a night shift, the quality of which is too good for me to have ever afforded? Also, I can’t be positive, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been washed, hair and all—hair that once again possesses its natural blue tint, which I haven’t seen in years of magicking it into something more normal. I take a whiff of my arm. I’ve been perfumed, too.
“Do you often sniff yourself?”
I jump nearly a foot off the bed and barely swallow a shriek. It wasn’t a dream, or a nightmare, or even a poppy hallucination. Because there he stands, near the window, as solid as if he were made of living flesh: the dead man. He’s wearing the same dark attire as before, black cloth and leather. He looks just as young and infuriatingly handsome. It’s as if he’s walked straight out of that tomblike chamber and into the real world.Myworld.
“Get out!” I shout at him, drawing the bedcovers to my shoulders.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to this,” he says, nodding down at himself. “I’m here to stay.”
“Why can I see you now? Aren’t you supposed to be, I don’t know”—I flap my hand at him, as if waving away a bad smell—“a shadow or something?”
“Now that I’m bound to your spirit, you can see me as if I were truly alive.”
I pick up a brass candlestick shaped like a woman with the wings of a dragonfly. “Can I hit you as if you were truly alive?”
His tone is as patient as ever. “You can try.”
I fling it at him. My aim, miraculously, is true. Except the winged woman fliesbeyondhis leather breastplate, passing right through him, and clangs violently against the wall.
“You said—!”
“I said you couldtry.”
For a minute, I only seethe at him from across the room. “Where is my father?”
“You’ll see him soon enough.”
My words are clipped, boiling. “What if I really,reallywant you to go away?”
“That’s at my discretion. But since you so politely asked…” He nods at me and vanishes into the shadows.
“And don’t come back!” I shout.
A knock sounds at the bedroom door.
Ignoring it for the moment, I slide out from under the heavy covers and stand, bracing myself on a bedpost until I find my balance. Then I stumble over to the window’s thick curtains and whip them aside.
I stare down over the polis from a higher vantage than I’ve ever seen before. I must be in the wealthy sector, atop the hill in the center. Maybe I’m in a manor or… no, I can’t think about the alternative. The spread of buildings and streets beneath me is nearly impressive enough to distract me from anything else, but it’s what liesbeyondthat makes me gasp.
