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“You can’t have him.” I glare, as Dace finds my hand. The press of his fingers warning that this is not the best way to proceed, though it’s not like that stops me. “You can have all the others. I don’t care what you do with them—but this one is mine.”
“None of them are yours!” She shrieks, eye sockets glowering, skirt thrashing and slithering. “How dare you even consider it! Don’t you know who I am?”
I nod. Not only do I know, but the Richter we’re fighting over finally guessed too, judging by the way he snarls and yelps and fights like hell to free himself. But it’s no use. With a single flick of her wrist, a knot of snakes swarm him, binding his throat, his arms, his legs—holding him captive like the vines once did.
“Then you know those bones belong to me. All the bones belong to me. And these particular bones have been denied me for too many years.” She glowers at the undead Richter beside her. “Today is Día de los Muertos—the day when the dead bring me their bones. It is not a courtesy. It is not an offering to appease me. It is the price one pays for their final admittance into the afterlife. This family of Coyotes has eluded me for centuries, but no more. Their bones will be mine, and since you found your way here, yours are mine too.”
Dace tightens his hold, but I’m too stunned by her words to edit myself. “You can’t take my bones!” I cry. “I’m not even dead!” Dace moves to hush me, subdue me, but it’s no use. I came here to get Paloma’s soul, and there’s no way I’ll let myself fail.
The Bone Keeper stares, weighing my words as her fingers pick at her hissing, slithering, twist of a snake skirt. “That’s easy enough to remedy,” she decides, her shiny black boots gliding across the dirt until she stands just before me. Her skin so translucent it looks like a sheen of wax paper has been pulled over her thin, bony frame—her skull of a face glistening as a result of all the stars she just ate.
Her fingers reaching for me, ready to join me with the undead Richter beside her, when Dace steps between us and says, “We’re not interested in bones. The only ones we want to keep are our own. We’re here for another reason entirely—it’s my understanding you’ve been known to work with the Light Workers from time to time—helping them retrieve stolen souls. This one here—” He motions toward the freak held hostage by the snakes. “He’s stolen a soul we desperately need. If you’ll help us retrieve it, we’ll leave the bones to you.”
Her skirt of squirming snakes shoots around Dace to lash at my legs, their flickering tongues finding all the spots where my jeans have ripped, stinging and lashing my skin as she says, “I don’t make deals.”
Her eye sockets darken in dismissal, as though that’s the end of it. But we didn’t come all this way to give up so easily. I swipe hard at the snakes, watching as they dart back to the protective bed of her hips, as I stand beside Dace and say, “I need that soul, and I need it now. A good woman is dying, and I can’t let that happen. And while you may not care about that, you might care to know that these undead soul stealers and the sorcerer who made them, have terrible plans for this place. They’re going to destroy the Lowerworld as you know it, and all the other worlds too. But you can help stop it. If you’ll just return this soul to me, then—”
“I don’t care about their plans!” she cries, her voice as outraged as her skull face. “It’s bones I’m interested in. Every time Coyote invades the Lowerworld, it results in millions of deaths in the Middleworld—a bounty for me!”
“But you’ll get those bones eventually!” I practically spit in frustration. “Don’t you get it? By not even trying to fight this, you’re letting them win at their game. You claim to hate them for eluding you all these years—and yet you’re helping them go through with their plans! It just doesn’t make any sense.”
While she doesn’t instantly cave like I’d hoped, it’s clear my words have had an impact. She grows quiet, pensive, making no further move either toward me or away from me. Her face transforming, returning to the beauty she was when we first came upon her, though the snake skirt remains. She turns to me and says, “Paloma is on my list.”
I swallow hard. Wondering what it means but too afraid to ask, so Dace does it for me.
“The list of the dead,” she says. “Or soon to be dead. She’s on today’s list. It is done. There is no going back.”
“But she’s not gone yet.” Dace strives for calm, though the way he grips my fingers tells me he’s as worried as I am. “It doesn’t have to be this way. You have plenty of bones to keep you busy. You have theirs”—he points toward the freaks hanging from the tree—“and you have his”—he motions toward the Richter bound by snakes. “That’s a lot of fresh skeletons in exchange for one soul. Seems like a pretty good trade, no?”
She flips her hair over her shoulder, a glimmering rainbow of reds that momentarily steals my attention. Nodding toward the undead Richter, she says, “You’re willing to sacrifice Coyotes for Seekers?”
Dace shrugs, face confused when he says, “Why wouldn’t I?” Having no idea what that means. But I do, and the words leave me chilled.
“I find that very intriguing.” She steps toward him, her onyx eyes moving over him, drinking in his wet form, the way his T-shirt and jeans mold and cling. Licking her lips slowly, lasciviously, she says, “Actually, I find you very intriguing.”
Dace freezes, eyes locked on hers, hand clasped in mine, as she runs a slender finger down the length of his cheek, around the curve of his ear. Holding his gaze for so long I suddenly understand what I didn’t before: She doesn’t just keep the bones, she knows the bones.
Knows where they came from.
Knows their full history—how they found their way to her.
She removes her hand from his flesh, returns to her place. Continuing to gaze at him with an expression I can’t quite decipher when she says, “Why wouldn’t you sacrifice a Coyote for a Seeker?” She shakes her head, eyes sparkling, teeth glittering when she adds, “Because you’re the Echo, that’s why.” She throws her head back, allowing great peals of laughter to boom in the sky—a cacophony of mockery that swoops down around us. Leveling her gaze once again when she adds, “Then again, as the Echo, your destiny is not only a strange one but a shared one.” Her eyes switch to mine.
“I don’t know what that means.” Dace searches her face, his voice steeped with worry. “What the heck is an Echo? What’re you getting at?”
She grins, her face so beautiful, so seductive it’s impossible to look away. Moving forward again, she cups his face in her hands, pressing her forehead to his when she says, “Oh, but that is for both of you to discover. Just know, that when you do—I’ll be watching. I’ve been waiting for something like this—this is going to be good fun, indeed!” She moves away from Dace and turns to the Richters still hanging from their feet. “And whose souls have they stolen?” she asks.
“I don’t know.” My gaze moves among them. “All I know is they don’t belong here. And if the souls are not reunited with their beings, then how will their bones find their way to you when there will be no afterlife for them to aspire to?”
Our eyes meet, and it feels like something clicked, like I finally convinced her of what I know to be true. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Her face is so vague and unreadable, her mood so volatile, I’m braced for just about anything when she turns away from me, focuses hard on her snakes, and shouts, “Extract them—set the souls free and l
eave the bones for me!”
They dart from her legs, slithering across the ground at astonishing speed. Winding their way to the line of undead Richters, they spring into their mouths and dive straight down their throats, before emerging with numerous glowing, white spheres they’re quick to spit out. The souls bouncing, soaring, winking out of sight as they go in search of their owners—all those poor people I saw in the photos. The sudden loss of energy causing the bodies to give way, dissolving to a mound of old bones and dust.
With just one Richter left, she looks at me and says, “Perhaps you’d like the honor?”
I nod, watching as she plucks a snake from her skirt and thrusts it toward me. Its eyes flaring, tongue striking—reminding me of the snake from my dream, the one that stole Dace’s soul—only this soul extraction won’t fail. I won’t let that happen.
