spirits willing to attack us, which means the real work is closer to the castle.”
Looking down from the cliff, I was able to confirm her theory. “You’re right. I can see them. Fewer than before, though. And they’re not even watching us anymore. I bet we’ll have their full attention once we reach the palace again.”
“Okay. So how do we do this?” Varga asked. “We’ve got two swamp witches to work with, along with one jinni to zap us here and there. I think we need to calculate our resources carefully on this one, if we want Tae, Lumi, and Eira to make it inside.”
Baethal’s voice cut through the night like an unforgiving sword. “Or, and just hear me out here, you could all just turn around and get off Mortis before we have to take drastic measures against you.”
We all froze, our heads turning slowly to find Baethal, Wrik, and Theoth standing about fifty yards away from us, on the southern edge of the cliff’s peak. Their scythes were out, and they didn’t look like they’d come back to talk things through.
“Or I could give you another whiff of the Word for you all to understand that it really isn’t a good idea to piss off a swamp witch,” Lumi replied, her tone clipped.
Wrik grinned. “Our boss says we shouldn’t be scared of you. That a swamp witch is merely a conduit for the Word, and that the Word is quite capricious.”
“You’ve spoken to Death since the last time we met,” Lumi breathed, her eyes wide.
“Of course. We had to seek council,” Baethal replied. “Which is why I’m asking you one last time to leave, before I make you.”
That made us understand that Death didn’t want to see us. Then why did I still feel that strange pull coming from the palace? It didn’t make a lick of sense.
“We didn’t come all this way to be refused an audience,” I said.
“If we let anyone get near her, our necks will be on the line,” Theoth replied. “We really don’t want to do this, but if you insist, we will. And you know by now that one puny scythe won’t stop us.”
“Besides, our colleagues are here to reinforce the general message that you’re not welcome here,” Baethal added.
Surely enough, as soon as he spoke those words, we all saw about two dozen Reapers appear around us, each of them armed with a scythe. Their uniforms varied, though all were in shades of black and white. The one thing that was consistent about them was their clear order to keep us away from Death.
Despite the fear gathering in my throat like a ball of coarse yarn, I couldn’t bring myself to cave in, to turn around and leave, as they’d asked. We’d come too far, and we’d been through too much. Most importantly, our survival and our worlds depended on this one audience I wished to seek with Death.
The only challenge now was to get away from these Reapers, ideally unharmed, and find my way into Death’s palace, where I knew she was waiting for me. Why is she sending her agents and the ghosts after us, then? That was a question only she could answer. Regardless, I only had one option from this moment onward. Find Death and talk to her.
Harper
“You can’t hide that soul from us, Herbie!” Kill shouted as he lunged at us again.
Herbert managed to turn himself invisible and sneak out from the tight circle that the original ghouls had formed around us. He started running, his feet barely touching the thin layer of white moondust on the ground, as he moved faster and faster. After a few seconds, it felt more like flying at a low altitude.
Gripped by terror, I stayed quiet while using Herbert’s eyes to find the fastest way out of this mess. Sure, we’d gained extremely valuable intelligence just now, but it was worthless if I didn’t get back in one piece—and Herbert was bound to pay a deadly price for having made this detour. While I’d understood his decisions so far, I had to admit, this was a piss-poor way to end the whole trip.
“Don’t worry, I’m trying to get us to a high spot so I can jump off,” Herbert breathed as he glided across the barren field smattered with small craters. An asteroid shower had hit this moon a long time ago.
“You can run, but you can’t hide!” another ghoul hissed, not far to our right.
Kill whispered a word, something