Page 54 of Reap the Night
He paced, short lengths with sharp turns that made my stomach ache.
I held the ice pack he’d given me to my bruised and swollen throat.
It hurt to swallow. It hurt to breathe.
At least my pulse had stropped racing, but for a moment, I’d been certain I was about to die. If the wards hadn’t been muting Ezekiel’s strength, and if Ordell hadn’t returned, he would have crushed my windpipe and ended me.
Ezekiel slept now, trapped in nightmares once more.
“He’s not himself, Orina,” Ordell reminded me. “He’s living in another time. He doesn’t see you. He sees Loviator.”
He’d thought I was Loviator wearing someone’s face. Arabella’s maybe?
“Where the fuck is Ingrid when you need her?” Hemlock muttered.
“About that…” Ordell said. “I spoke to Ariella, and she confessed that she used a spirit trap on Ingrid. Ingrid suspected that she wasn’t who she said she was.”
“So whoever sent her knows about Ingrid and the spirits?” Hemlock asked. “Who the fuck is it?”
But I was more concerned about Ingrid. “Where…” My throat pinched and burned. I winced and forced out the words. “Where is the trap?”
“We don’t know,” Ordell said. “Ariella…Ruby, her real name is Ruby, said the trap vanished from her room a couple of days ago.”
“Do you believe her?” Hemlock said.
“She has no cause to lie,” Ordell said. “She’s told us everything else, and she knows she isn’t safe if the person who hired her finds out she’s failed.”
“So we have to keep her here?”
“Keep up the ruse and keep Orina away from Ezekiel.”
“I’m not leaving him.” I winced as pain lanced through my throat.
“You have to,” Hemlock said. “You’re probably being watched. We need to ensure that nothing seems out of the ordinary.”
“He needs me.”
“We can get Godor to fly you here late at night,” Hemlock suggested. “For a few hours.”
Ordell nodded. “Okay, it’s a plan, then.”
“What about Ingrid? The other ghosts…I can’t feel them.”
“They’re still here,” Hemlock said. “But Ingrid acts like an anchor for them all. The house runs on autopilot when she rests, and so do the specters. Everything keeps running, but it slows.”
“We need to find her.”
“Ordell and I will search the castle. But we should get you back to the chapter house now.”
I wanted to go to Kaster’s, but if he saw my injury, there would be questions that I couldn’t answer, so I set down my ice pack and nodded stiffly.
Ordell helped me up and pulled me into a hug. “It’ll be all right. We’ll find Ingrid, and we’ll help Ezekiel. He has something that he never had the last time he fractured. He has you. He has hope.”
I had to believe that.
Haidenand the team made a huge fuss of me, and Merry offered to heal me, but the last thing I wanted was for her memory to reset, which tended to happen every time she used her ability on me.
I settled for an herbal salve and some special tea then sat at the dining table while Haiden whipped up a batch of soft cookies, haltingly filling them all in on that had happened with Ariella.
