Page 53 of Mortal Things

And even if he was—what then? Do I honestly think I have real feelings for him, when we work for enemy gods? How could I possibly imagine myself with a Regent of Lies? The entire reason Raven had chosen me for this confirmation was to get closer to Étienne, to find out if he and Thorn had anything to do with the Regents’ deaths. I’ve been playing along so well that I’m starting to believe it.

Still, all I can do is picture how furious he’d looked, how he’d given me that grim smile. Naughty girl.

My ring flashes a warning as I step onto a train. I wince, then look around the car, wondering if there’s a threat here, but I only see a few other passengers, all staring listlessly off into space.

“Don’t worry,” I mutter at my hand. “I’m just taking a walk. I’ll catch up with Raven soon.”

But the ring doesn’t stop its painful vibration.

I sigh at it. “Oh, come on,” I argue under my breath. “Raven doesn’t need to know where I am. He didn’t see me after my first test.”

The girl sitting nearby casts me a weird look and scoots a little farther away, and I stop talking to my hand, trying to ignore its warning pulse.

I emerge from the Underground after a while and into my own neighborhood, onto a series of empty streets. The quiet comforts me, and I tilt my head up to look at the faint smattering of stars, letting myself sink into the silence. My boots echo against the pavement.

My ring flashes again, cutting through my reverie.

I look down at it. The eye is still fixed on me, still glaring, and out of instinct, I glance around, trying to figure out why it’s so agitated tonight.

“You know,” I mutter as I study the shadows around me, my skin prickling, “it’s a real flaw in your design that you can’t tell me exactly what you’re thinking.”

It just tingles again.

On the main street somewhere behind me, I can still see the eternal bustle of commotion, red buses and cabs and pedestrians, the bright lights of stores reflected against the rain-washed streets. But here, in a neighborhood settling into night, it’s easier to notice the complete lack of wind through the trees, the absence of evening birdsong.

When I look up again at the sky, I see no moving lines of soaring birds, no silver-white trails of airplanes cutting below the clouds. There is nothing in motion save for myself.

The stillness suddenly seems ominous, less like a moment of calm and more like a coiled spring.

My ring flashes again, so hot this time that I jump. When I look down at it, the eye is wide, looking around in a way that raises the hairs on the back of my neck.

As if the stillness around me highlights movement, I see something shift in the lines of the rooftop at the end of the block. A Wraith is crouched there, its wings partially outstretched. It seems to be imitating the look of a large bat, except its snout is too long, its back too hunched. It, too, does not move, but its gaze is turned in my direction.

Another movement appears in the shadows of the alley to my right. A fox with white eyes and a streak all the way down its back trots through, on its way to some mysterious destination.

My skin prickles. Quite a few Wraiths seem to be here.

At the end of the intersection, perched on top of the traffic lights, is another, taking on the shape of a cat—except with too many eyes, all narrowed into slits. I halt as it swivels its head in my direction, as if it senses me, hungry for my eyes. And as I pause here, I notice a dark silhouette slouched against the entrance steps leading up to a building. It resembles a human, but only in the way of the creature in the theater’s alley, its mouth so large that its tongue lolls long and thin from it, the outline of its body rippling like a mirage.

They are gathering rapidly now, and every time I look around, I see a new one. A child walking backward toward me, drawing ever closer, singing a song a little off pitch, calling for me to follow. A colony of rats scampering across the ground in a cluster, long tails snaking behind them, sometimes running separately, sometimes blending together into a single amorphous mass.

I pick up my pace. It takes me another second to realize that the Wraith seated on the steps has now risen. I can hear it lurching behind me, the uneven pattern of its footsteps paired with the occasional scrape of fingernails against walls.

I don’t look over my shoulder. I just break into a jog. The rational part of my brain tries to find a comforting explanation. Perhaps the Wraith behind me is just another pedestrian, and my own fears are making me hallucinate things.

Steady yourself, Doc, Laine would say.

The thought of her words is so potent that I almost see her walking beside me, another illusion like the one Étienne had created of her during my last test—eyes bright, breath fogging in the night air, golden curls of hair outlined by the streetlights, her smile quick and reassuring.

I’m still thinking of her when the Wraith behind me attacks.

I hear the sudden scrape of its claws before it reaches me, and the sound saves my life. I whirl around, my coat spinning with me—

—right as the Wraith’s fanged mouth clamps down on my coat’s sleeve instead of my throat.

It yanks my coat back. I’m thrown off my feet by the force of it. We both tumble to the ground—the side of my head hits hard pavement as I struggle against the Wraith, trying to free myself, and the world suddenly turns into a tailspin. A shout builds at the base of my throat.

The attack sets off the other nearby Wraiths. The catlike creature on the streetlight jumps down with a high-pitched shriek, and the bat Wraith on the rooftop bursts into flight, splitting into a dozen more. They spiral toward me. At the same time, the child stops, back still turned, blocking my path forward.