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“There is nothing any of us alive today can do for you now,” I replied. “The time for enabling you all to move on peacefully to your next life has long gone—just as it has for my little ones.”
His gaze flickered slightly—regret, sorrow, it was hard to say. “Your little ones didn’t have to die the way ours did. No child, then or now, should ever have to face such a fate.”
“My little ones,” I said, unable to help the edge of anger in my voice, “faced a death far worse than anything you could ever imagine. Trust me,
the death that came with the bombs—however horrible—was nothing compared to what we faced.”
“‘We’?” He raised an eyebrow. “You live. The two little ones are as we are.”
“I live by a quirk of fate.” And the genetics that made me immune to all known poisons. “But I am not here to talk about our fate or yours. What can you tell me about the child who was here a few days ago?”
The air tightened around me. The deep-voiced man scowled. “And why would you be interested in that one?”
I frowned. “Why are you so . . . scathing about such a young girl?”
“It is not so much her—or any of the others who come through here, though there is much about them that speaks of the rifts that ravage this place,” he replied, “but rather the one who accompanied her.”
My frown grew. “The ranger?”
“No, not the ranger,” he all but spat, “although one such as he has no right to enter Carleen. Not when his people are the reason we are bound here.”
Vehemence stung the air, so sharp it snatched my breath and made breathing impossible for several seconds. “If you hate the ranger so much,” I said, “why did you allow him entry?”
“Because the ranger was tracking it.”
The creeping sensation of ice had reached both knees and elbows. I needed to hurry this along, and yet, that was the one thing I couldn’t do. It would offend the ghosts and possibly shut down the lines of communication. “‘It’?”
“The creature who always accompanies the children.”
“Creature?” A dead weight began to form in my stomach. “What sort of creature are we talking about?”
“The thing with few features.” The hate and revulsion in his words were amplified a thousand times by the rest of the ghosts, creating an emotive wave that just about blew my senses apart.
I blinked back tears and tried to ignore both the pain induced by that wave and the strengthening creep of death. “Was this creature tall and thin in build, with a gray skin tone?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes and swore softly. Part of me had hoped that Penny and Nuri had been wrong—that it wasn’t the wraiths taking the children. I guess I should have known that a child with a strong enough seeker skill to understand what I was would not be wrong about who her captor was.
I took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Where did this creature take Penny and the other children?”
“Into the false rifts.”
I frowned. “False rifts?”
He nodded. “The rifts that do not drift. The ones that hide within the shadows.”
The image of the crater, with its thick, threatening darkness, swam through my mind. I shivered. I didn’t want to venture into that darkness; I really didn’t.
“How many rifts are there like this?”
“Six,” he replied. “But only two are used when they are accompanied by the children. The large one you inspected, and one down the other side of this hill.”
“Can you show me the one Penny came through, the day she was rescued by the ranger?”
Fear slithered around me. It seemed the Carleen ghosts feared the rifts, though what danger any rift presented to ghosts I still had no idea.
The deep-voiced man considered me for a moment and then nodded. “Follow me.”
