Page 13 of Too Hexed to Handle

‘You’re shaking.’ He shrugs off his jacket and drapes it around my shoulders. I clutch the coarse fabric, taking comfort in the familiar scent of pine enveloping me. It’s not an emotion. It’s just him, his natural scent, something normal among the abnormality of today.

I try to hold on to that comfort as I approach the mound. The surrounding ground is flat – too flat. As though there used to be more heaps of dirt here, but someone took the time to press the earth down.

‘How many?’ I don’t need to elaborate for him to know what I’m asking.

He edges closer – close enough for me to feel his heat, but far enough I don’t have the urge to run from his answer. ‘Five here. There are others . . . elsewhere.’

I let out a stuttering breath. ‘And were they all Souleaters, or do you . . . kill people for fun?’

‘I can’t believe you’d ask me that.’

‘Can you blame me?’ My voice wavers. I’ll be the first to admit it’s bordering on hysterical, but he can hardly judge me for that. I whirl round, wrench his jacket from my body and chuck it at his chest. ‘Is this how you got the bruise on your face? Is it what you’re doing when I hear you creeping around at night?’

‘You hear that?’

‘Astin, I’m surprised the whole of Shiverholde doesn’t hear it. For some kind of assassin, you aren’t light on your feet.’ I hope he doesn’t realise I’m being glib to mask how much I hate what’s he doing. Anybody else would be pleased he’s ridding the town of Souleaters.

All I can do is wonder what would happen if he found out that he’s been obliviously living with one.

Astin has the audacity, of all things, to roll his eyes. ‘I’m hardly an assassin.’

‘Then what are you?’

‘I’m . . . me. Look, you’re still shivering, can we go –’

‘I’m not letting you back inside until you tell me everything,’ I say sharply. ‘I have just wiped blood off the floor of my own home, and you owe me a proper explanation for that.’

‘The fact he was about to hurt you isn’t explanation enough?’

‘It doesn’t explain the rest of them. Where you found them. Why you aren’t leaving them for the wardens to deal with.’

He sighs, sinking on to an overturned log. After a moment’s hesitation, I move to join him, our knees a hair’s breadth apart.

‘Our ancestors made a mistake, forcing Souleaters from the settlement. At least then we knew where they were. Too many fled before they could be killed. You’ve no idea, Dais. Every town and city is crawling with them, living in secret . . . Look at Benedict, for fuck’s sake. A Souleater working for the treasury, pretending to be normal –’

‘He wasn’t pretending,’ I protest, somewhat feebly. ‘They are . . . They’re not . . . How else do you suggest they earn a living?’

I can’t be the only one who just wants to live an easy life. To walk among humans without fear of being punished or hated for the crimes of those who came before. Who is trying their hardest, every day, not to give in to their terrible nature.

Astin stares at me like I’ve grown two heads. ‘I’m not suggesting they live at all.’

My stomach plummets.

‘They’re easy to find if you know where to look,’ he says. ‘Some humans will turn a blind eye to their location if there’s money to be made. Rather than hand them over to the wardens, they help them conduct their business. Ask the right questions in a dark alley or a dodgy inn, and someone will show you the way. You’ll be given an address, or taken down some rotting stairs, or led behind a beaded curtain, and they’ll be there, waiting. Waiting for a human stupid enough to think letting a Souleater channel them is worth whatever the Souleater is willing to pay for it. Sometimes it’s money. Sometimes it’s a magical potion like –’ He breaks off.

Like the kind my parents sell in their shop. Like the lust powder I keep beneath the bar. I assumed his unwillingness to talk about either was out of distaste for their kind – and, okay, as far as the powder goes, annoyance at what I use it for – but I never grasped how deep his hatred ran.

The one time I introduced him to my parents, he launched into an interrogation about who their supplier was – Mum refused to answer, of course, because a long-standing arrangement thanks to the Souleater in our family isn’t something she wants to become common knowledge. Great-great-granduncle Howard arranged it as a favour for his brother, and even as the business passed through generations, the Souleaters kept providing.

Souleaters, I now realise, Astin wanted to find and kill, if Mum had been willing or able to give up their names.

Tears well in my eyes. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this, Astin. It’s not your responsibility.’

The more he seeks out Souleaters, the more he’ll learn our tells. The flare in our nostrils when we scent a particularly strong emotion. The way our fingers flex with the need to reach out and take, and taste, and – hexes, I’m trembling just at the thought of it. It’s only a matter of time before he realises what I am if he keeps this up.

I need to get him to stop.

‘I don’t know why you’re so upset about this,’ he says.