Greythorne (Bloodleaf 2)

And then the wolf laughed.

“Why are we stopping?” Onal hissed.

I didn’t answer; instead, I released her carefully amid the black coiling roots of a burned-out tree. Then I turned to face the wolf.

He was waiting for me to recognize him, slowly stalking me, one step forward at a time. His tongue lolled, but the unnatural sound was not made with lips or teeth; it had come from deep within its infernal, festering body.

Little miss.

Where are my apples, little miss?

My hand was slick on my knife.

In the Gray, I’d observed Lyall with a collection of luneocite stones, saying that he’d had a good “spectral harvest.”

This soul, so full of rot in real life, seemed to have found a more suitable skin to occupy.

That’s why I could not see ghosts anymore. Not because the events at the tower had changed my ability. They were being collected.

I was facing what was left of old Brom Baltus.

We waited, each watching for the other to make the first move.

Brom, true to form, grew impatient and lunged, teeth bared. I dodged, slipping between two trees that were too close together to admit his bulky frame. The trees scraped away what skin remained on his flanks as he followed, chomping and slathering. His rotting claws left white scratches in the blackened wood. I buried my knife up to the hilt beneath his jaw and twisted, but it broke through the skull on the other side and stuck there. I couldn’t pull it out without risking my hand on those teeth.

You can’t kill what’s already dead. Rosetta’s words came back to me.

She’d used a feral spell to separate soul from skin; I had only blood magic that was already too weak to even hold up the invisibility spell.

That’s when I felt it again, the surge of ready magic calling, asking, almost begging to be used.

As the wolf wriggled from between the two trees, I dove toward Onal. She screamed as I grabbed her wounded shoulder and drew her blood into my hands.

It hurt to hear, but I had to do it. This was the only way I could help her. Help us.

Brom was on me, toppling me over and pinning me to the ground just like he had in the Quiet Canary’s stable.

I’ll kill you, the echoing, wraithlike voice said. That’s the reward for witches and thieves.

“I’m not a thief,” I said, putting my bloody hands on his bony maw while I uttered the first spell I could think of.

“Apage!” I cried. Be gone.

Thief, the wolf howled as the black smoke of his soul began to trickle from his shredded skin. Thief?!

I yanked my knife from under its slackening jaw, and then I stepped back, feeling a surge of triumph.

Until I looked down and saw my hands, smeared with Onal’s blood.

Brom was right.

I was a thief.

22

That night, Onal and I slept in the Tomb of the Lost.

It was agony knowing that the others were out there, in Lyall’s control, and I was not with them. The weight of my desire to go after them pressed relentlessly on my chest, suffocating and painful. But equally excruciating was my guilt for what I’d done to Onal. The wound was terrible on its own, but it was my use of her unwilling blood for magic that seemed to have caused her the most harm. She was weak and sick, as if I’d poisoned her. Onal barely spoke to me, allowing me only to dress and treat her wound because she could not do it herself. She did not even criticize my clumsy fingers or poor technique; that’s how I knew I’d really done wrong. In normal circumstances, Onal would never have passed up a chance to give me an earful.