It was chilly outside, but I’d recovered from my earlier shivers. I’d given Adam back his coat, but I’d kept my own on. Tad only had a sweater on, but he didn’t look cold.
Tad and I had worked together for years. I felt no need to make conversation as I walked out to one of the picnic tables and put my plate on top of it.
Rather than use the bench, I climbed onto the table and sat cross-legged, facing the house. Tad sat on the other half of the table, facing the opposite direction—toward the gate to Underhill and also toward my old house, the one he was moving into in a couple of days.
Before I started eating, I took out my phone and looked up “snow in Africa.” Apparently the Atlas Mountains in Morocco regularly got dusted in snow. I switched to my weather app. It wouldn’t have Aspen Creek on it—or at least it hadn’t last time I checked. But Troy, Montana, was close. They had a winter storm warning until Saturday noon. The area expected high winds and snow accumulation up to eighteen inches in the next twenty-four hours, as much as three feet of snow in the mountains.
“You okay?” Tad asked.
“No,” I said. “Worried about a friend.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Nope,” I told him. “Me, neither.”
“That sucks,” he said.
“For sure.”
The pepper on the pizza wasn’t poblano but something a lot hotter, though it went with the acid-sweetness of the pineapple in a way I wouldn’t have predicted.
I looked up at the moon, which made a C shape, and smiled. A long time ago I’d sat on top of a picnic table while Samuel told me about the science of the moon’s phases. I’d told him that the way I could tell a waning moon was that it looked like a cookie monster had bitten into it and left a “C” in its place. I’d sung him the “C Is for Cookie” song. It was the first time he kissed me.
That had been a long time ago. And it had probably been for the best that Bran had put an end to our romance, though I hadn’t been grateful at the time. When you’re sixteen, sometimes you need the adults in the room to step in.
“You and Izzy okay?” I asked. Tad wasn’t sixteen. But he was still pretty young.
“Can’t help your other friend so maybe you can help me?” suggested Tad gently.
“Keep my nose out of it?” I asked.
He sighed. “For now. I warned her about Dad, about me, too. But I guess she hadn’t listened.”
I took another bite of pizza and crunched through a pepper that had been lurking beneath the cheese, spicier than the first. I looked around and realized I hadn’t brought out anything to drink.
“I’ll get you a water,” Tad said, jumping off the table and escaping from our discussion of his love life.
I looked back up at the moon as the door closed behind him. Then I oh-so-casually let my gaze drift back down to the house again. There was something wrong with the roofline.
As if he had only been waiting for me to notice him, a shape pulled away from the shadows to stand silhouetted against the sky. He walked a few deliberate steps until the faint light of the moon fell on him, so I could see him clearly.
He was dressed in ragged clothing—like a scarecrow, like the Harvester from the movie. There was no question that the resemblance was on purpose. A small part of my brain noted that it might be a good idea if Adam and I actually watched the blasted movie. The rest of me sat with a piece of half-eaten pizza in one hand and didn’t move.
Though he was backlit by the moon, I had good night vision. I should have been able to see his face. But, as in the movie poster, all I could see was blackness. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need to see his face to know who it was.
“Oh no,” I said, my throat dry. “No.”
He held the Soul Taker in one hand. In my head, I’d seen a shining blade, something worthy of the power it carried. But it wasn’t like that at all. The blade was pitted and rough-finished. The handle was wrapped in something that could have been leather—or electrical tape, something dark.
I stood up, as if the extra height would help me pick out details more clearly. I peered into the blankness that was his face and tried to decide if it was a mask. He angled his head, following my motion, obviously returning my attention in a way that felt almost mocking.
He walked toward me, the steep angle of the roof not affecting the grace of his movements.
Tad opened the back door, a glass of water in his hand. His body stiffened and his eyes looked behind me. He was facing the wrong way to see the Harvester drop down and disappear into the shadows on his way to the ground. I stared at where he’d been for a second, trying to process exactly how he’d disappeared.
“What is that?” said Tilly breathlessly. “Oh, what is that?”
I jumped off the picnic table and turned to face Underhill. Red curling hair hung in a tangled mess nearly to her feet, which were filthy. Usually she appeared in the guise of a child, but tonight she chose to be a teenager, and she was bundled up in a jacket that looked very much like Adam’s—exactly like Adam’s.
She smiled brilliantly at me, her face alight with greed—an expression I’d seen on Zee’s face earlier today. Because of that, when she said, “Usually they are disappointing, don’t you think? But that was even better than in the stories. It was so dark and vast. Empty and full at the same time, an abyss that stretches across the universe. Can you get that for me, Coyote’s daughter? If you get that for me, I will—” Tad stepped between us, and she broke off, pouting.
“Iron-kissed son,” she spat like an annoyed cat. “Have a care.”
“Mercy,” said Tad, “I think it might be a good idea to finish eating inside.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“Get it for me,” Tilly said, “and I’ll keep your people safe.”
I gathered my food and thought hard. I had to say something, because rudeness was likely to be more dangerous than silence.
“I fear, Tilly, that acquiring such a thing is beyond my abilities,” I managed.
Watching her with narrow eyes, Tad walked backward as he escorted me to the house. When I took a quick glance over my shoulder before I went through the door, she was staring up at the roof, her face moonlit and rapt.
Adam was on his feet by the time I got inside.
“Marsilia was right,” I told him. “We need to find Wulfe. He’s the one who has the Soul Taker.”
11
I dreamed.
“Why don’t you ask our lady how to find him, Stefan?” I muttered to myself, imitating Andre’s somewhat prissy tones. “She knows where he is.”
I hadn’t expected to be wandering around the countryside when a prudent man would be fast asleep, but my lady sometimes had a peculiar sense of humor. It was night, but the full moon and the brilliant stars left plenty of light to see by, even though the path was little more than a game trail at the edge of a field. The air smelled of the memory of the sun, and even the shadows had a friendly feel.
Just when I had started to think I’d gotten the directions wrong, I saw it. A huge old tree, like something out of my nonno’s stories, rose above the nearby trees, dominating the woods around it.
Just above eye level, the trunk split into two. In the bench formed between the halves, a youth lounged, eyes closed, with a vielle in one hand and a bow in the other, as if he’d fallen asleep in the middle of playing.
He was clothed all in white. His loose tunic, belted at the waist, hung over hose that were tied at midcalf. Peasant clothing, except that no peasant could have kept white clothing that pristine, and his belt, doubled and redoubled around his narrow waist, was heavily embroidered silk.