Page 37 of Mortal Things

But even as the logical part of my brain fights to explain it away, it also can’t quite ignore the obvious truth. The smear of blood is right below the gouged stall door, a stain that seems to match the size and harshness of the claw marks.

“You’re saying a Wraith did this?” I murmur, crouching down to inspect the blood more closely.

Étienne’s face is partly obscured behind the cut of shadows. All humor is gone from his expression, and in this moment, he looks ominous. Raven’s warning returns to me. It means a god has overstepped their boundaries.

“Can you sense any Wraiths nearby?” he asks in a low voice.

I swallow hard, then rise to my feet and turn back toward the bathroom door. When I concentrate, I can feel it—a thick, dark pull in my chest, the unmistakable sensation of something wrong, that shouldn’t exist. And right as I feel it, my ring vibrates in alarm, making me wince.

A thought occurs to me. Am I a Wraith? A soul fragment? Is that what’s wrong with me?

I nod for Étienne to follow, then step out of the bathroom and make my way back down the hall. We head up until it opens to the crowded bar, then turn left, where an unassuming door leads out into the theater’s back alley. The space is too dark for me to make out much more than the neon-lit silhouettes of clubgoers, but now and then, I see dark streaks against the floor, smears that look uncomfortably like the bloodstain in the bathroom. My insides churn.

As I push open the exit, I gasp and clutch my chest. The feeling of wrongness suddenly becomes overwhelming, filling every crevice of my body.

I must have stumbled, because Étienne’s grip is on my arm before I can realize it. He steadies me as we step out into the night and let the door close behind us.

There, I turn in the direction of the feeling—and see the Wraith hunched at the end of the alley, hungrily ripping into something lying on the ground. My blood turns to ice. This Wraith has taken on the form of a person dressed like a clubgoer, except it’s not quite right. Its arms are far too long, longer than its legs, with hands so spindly that the fingers clack against the floor. A skeletal structure that makes no scientific sense, that shouldn’t be possible. It does a half walk, half crawl, its hair hanging in a long, dark curtain over its face.

And its feast …

“Étienne,” I whisper, my eyes locked in horror on the creature.

He doesn’t say a word. But I can feel him stiffen at my side, his grip on my arm tightening.

We both recognize what the Wraith is devouring.

It’s the body of Soren.

13

Through a haze, I somehow manage to pull Étienne back into the shadows by the door. There, we watch the horrific scene in silence.

Wraiths are just ghosts. Even though I can see them wandering aimlessly through the mortal world, they cannot affect it because they no longer belong to it. Trapped between realms, they ache for the living and yearn to be made whole again.

But they do not attack. They do not stalk. They do not devour souls. They do not harm the living.

“That can’t be a Wraith,” I whisper.

Étienne shakes his head and narrows his eyes at me. “You’re a Harbinger of Death. You know it is, don’t you?”

I can’t deny his words. Only Harbingers of Death can destroy Wraiths. We can sense them, in the same way we can feel the heat of a living soul.

But this is not the kind of Wraith I know.

Étienne nods grimly toward the hulking figure as it tugs and pulls on Soren’s lifeless body. “I can’t stop it,” he whispers. “I can only slow it down.” His hand squeezes my elbow once as he steps out from the shadows.

Now I understand why he’d called me here, and why he needs my help. My skin prickles in fear. I grit my teeth, then move quietly with him toward the Wraith.

As we draw near, I get a better view of what it’s doing—devouring not Soren’s flesh, but something crimson and translucent it is pulling out through his mouth. Not blood. A soul. Soren’s head jerks eerily with each violent tug. His skin has already turned a shade of porcelain white, and a set of deep claw marks mar his chest.

We get so close that I can see the wisps drifting off the edge of the creature’s figure, as if this disproportional human is a mirage wavering against the cement. Its overly long arms brace against the ground.

All of a sudden, it stops moving. Lifts its head. Turns so I can see the profile of its face. It is humanlike, in the way of its body, but its eyes are entirely white, and its mouth extends all the way down to its chin.

Then it turns completely around so that those white eyes lock onto us. And I realize that the reason its mouth is so extended is because its teeth are too long and sharp to fit.

Étienne crouches and presses his hand against the pavement.