But she couldn’t hear anything like it.
Just the flutter of a wing. A rustle of one of those birds she had heard earlier, a little louder than before, but still normal sounding. It definitely wasn’t the movement of a spectral cloak around the graying bones of a lost body. There was no way, she told herself. No way they just waited up there, until darkness descended.
Then floated down to brush against your cheek.
That was just a cobweb, she thought frantically.
But she crouched down anyway. She skittered along the floor to a safer feeling spot, hand constantly brushing at her face where something had definitely touched her. And was that a sound she could hear now? It was low and more like the moan of the wind than anything else.
Yet it was there.
It was the reason he laughed, she thought.
“Oh yes, you can hear them now, can’t you?” he said, voice as hollow and horrible as he actually was inside. Masks off now. “So what’s it going to be, bookworm? Leave or let them ravage you?”
Stay quiet, she told herself.
But she was too full of rage to listen. “I’d sooner be reduced to bloody ribbons than go back to thathellI was living,” she spat, surprised and horrified to hear a broken sound in her voice. And maybe he was surprised too, because he didn’t say a thing for what felt like eons.
Continents shifted and oceans shrunk in the time it took him to reply.
“It can’t have been that bad. It can’t be as bad as this.”
“This is only bad because you are making it be. Because you are trying to take it from me. All my life I’ve waited for wonders, and all you want to do is rip them up in front of my face. I can’t even have the books, not even them,” she said, intending at every step to be furious, but knowing her voice was starting to collapse even harder than it already had. She got to the wordbooks, and suddenly there was a real break there. A fracture that sounded so thin and high and desperate.
And now her face felt wet. She swiped at it angrily with her sleeve. Knew that he had to know she was crying. He had to, and yet for some reason he didn’t say anything. The silence spun out again.
Although it wasn’t exactly silence anymore.
That moaning was getting louder and more unsettling. And in between she could hear a strange rattling sound. Like bones, like skeleton bodies brushing against one another, as they flew around above her head.Wraiths use their half-corporeal bodies to slice their victims into pieces, she remembered reading.
But it wasn’t this that made her panic.
It was the creak of the floor somewhere close to her. Like a heavy foot, trying to creep up to her while she was crouched here, crying and vulnerable.Him, she thought, and just couldn’t helpit. She broke for the door, thinking completely impossible things, likeMaybe I can force it; maybe I can escape.
Thoughin fairness, she couldactuallysee it the second she got out from between the shelves. Moonlight streaked down from somewhere, some high-up window, and it illuminated that blue wood, the brass plate where you pushed. It was barely the length of a football pitch away, and there were no obstacles to make it difficult.
All she had to do was run.
Go, go, go, she ordered herself, and she did.
She just didn’t get farther than a single footstep. Something hit her from the side the moment she started moving. Something skeletal, she half hoped. Something that would end this fast, shred her to pieces, and leave her to speedily bleed out. But of course she knew it wasn’t immediately.
This thing had heft. It had weight.
It was like being shoved by a great blundering beast. She practically careened through the air on contact, and when she hit the ground, she didn’t just land in a great heap. She had enough momentum to actually slide. She skimmed along that tiled floor—like a hockey puck over ice.
It stunned her.
For a second, she couldn’t breathe or get her bearings. She lashed out at what she thought must be him over her. But she didn’t do it well. Her arm struck something too hard to be his body—a shelf, she thought. And sure enough, books rained down on her. She smelled leather, felt their fluttering pages. Gasped and tried to fling them away from her.
Then there was nothing.
She couldn’t feel him, couldn’t see him; he didn’t try to grabher or shove her again. And she could no longer hear the wraiths. It certainly seemed like silence and stillness, and something close to safety. She even sagged against the bookcase behind her. Body still trembling, breathing still shaky, arm hurting like a motherfucker.
But she was okay.
She didn’t even think much of it, when she heard the sound.
