Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

“Let them see what we do to them we thought was we brothers,” cried a male voice. “Will they fire on us? Or join us?”

A huge surge flooded as men came running and the fight thundered back into chaos.

“Move!” I shouted, startling my gals and the straggle of batey players alike.

We moved.

With the Rays we flowed onto streets hazy with the smoke of late afternoon cook fires. The noise from the ball court rose and fell like a cyclone’s winds, and now a drumming hammered into life, hands beating on skin, on thighs, like the beating heart of anger. We made our way first to Diantha’s compound, and then to Tanny’s, leaving off the girls until there was only me and Kayleigh and Luce to make our way home.

A different sort of drumming rose in counterpoint to the rhythm voiced by the angry demonstrators: the rumbling tread of booted feet, presaging the arrival of armed men from the direction of the old city. We came to an intersection obscured by dusk and smoke. A dozen wardens came running out of the haze. Without thinking, I drew shadows tight around me.

The wardens barely slowed, but as long as Kayleigh didn’t speak, there was no reason by looks or dress to think her anything except a local gal. They jogged on.

“Get yee to yee home,” called the one at the rear gruffly. “Don’ be foolish gals. Move it!”

As they trotted into darkness, Luce began sobbing. “Where is Cat? How did we lose she?”

While their backs were to me, I released the shadows.

Luce turned, saw me, and screamed. “Stay back, spirit!”

“Luce, it’s just me.”

“Yee’s an opia,” she croaked out between sobs. “Yee have come to haunt yee husband. Please, don’ harm me. I shall never tell!”

“What is an opia?”

“An opia is the spirit of a dead person,” said Kayleigh, staring at me with a flat gaze I could not read. “That’s what they call them here.”

“Why would you think I am dead, or a spirit?”

“How else could yee vanish like that?” said Luce in a choked voice.

I did not want her to look at me as if I had just lumbered down a white sand beach and tried to bite her. But I could not answer her question even with a question.

Kayleigh sighed. “Show her your navel, Cat. Then she’ll know you for a living person. Vai’s an idiot where you’re concerned, but our uncle taught him too well to be fooled by that.”

I tugged up my blouse, already pulled askew by our headlong flight. “Luce has seen it often enough when we shower! Touch it! I was born from a human woman just as you were!”

With a trembling hand, Luce touched her forefinger to my navel. “Yee must be some manner of behica. Or a…witch.”

A creature was hiding in the shadows, watching us. Darkness coiled. I heard measured breathing like ghostly bellows as it waited to pounce if I said what I should not.

I grabbed Luce’s hand. “I’m not, Luce! I’ll never harm you or anyone at Aunty’s. But I can’t speak of what is secret.”

Her lips parted into the admiring infatuation that afflicts only the young and innocent. I had seen it on Bee’s face often enough, although never directed at me. “Yee’s a secret mage!”

“You’re no mage,” said Kayleigh. “And if you hurt my brother, I’ll dig your eyes out with a spoon. And eat them.”

I could not help myself. I laughed, and when I laughed, the listening darkness melted away like a huge shadow dog. Neither Kayleigh nor Luce saw it go, loping away on four long legs into the night. Good riddance. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but my eyes won’t taste that good.”

Kayleigh’s lips curled toward a smile, and I remembered how much I had liked her when we had walked together across a snowy landscape, fleeing the village of Haranwy. Before I’d realized she had been leading her brother to me even knowing he thought he had to kill me. Maybe it wasn’t just her who felt resentful.

“Peace, Kayleigh,” I said. “Maybe we can start over.” Then I looked away, to allow her space to consider the offer. “Luce, I’m lost. Can you lead us home?”

She took my hand with a proud smile. “This way.”

When we reached the boardinghouse, Aunty Djeneba and Brenna hugged and scolded us. Luce staggered through an incoherent and disjointed tale, and I interrupted and said, “A riot broke out when the wardens came through the batey stands with lamps.”