looked down at her hands. The bird’s leg had definitely twitched. “I think we have a bigger problem than that,” she said, staring in disbelief as the dead blackbird suddenly blinked, fluttered one wing, and struggled drunkenly to its feet. Once up, it teetered a little and then flapped into the air to land expertly on one of the shelves.
“That bird . . .” said Edgar. “It was just stunned, right?”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Artemis. “Its neck was broken.”
“It couldn’t have been. How could it fly up there with a broken neck?”
Artemis’s lamp was shaking now. “Kate,” he said. “You’re the right age. And they say when it happens, it happens suddenly. Often under stress.”
“No,” said Kate, staring at her hands as if they were no longer a part of her. “It . . . it couldn’t have been me.”
“Did Kate do something to that bird?” Edgar looked around stupidly, as if everyone had gone crazy except him. “It looks pretty perky to me.”
Artemis lowered the lamp, making his eye sockets look deep and dark in the shadows. “This changes everything,” he said. “I think . . . I think she just brought it back to life.”
Chapter 2
The Collector
Outside, the market square was in chaos, and high above it, a tall, dark figure stood alone upon a rooftop, his wide shoulders silhouetted against the sky.
Silas Dane was the last man any town wanted to see. He stood there in silence, watching events unfolding exactly as he had planned. His clothes were deliberately dark and plain, but that was where his ordinariness ended. Silas had the presence of ten men. Power and threat exuded from him as clearly as fear leaked from the people down below, and his eyes shone with faint light, their irises bleached gray: the washed-out empty gray of death.
Even in their madness the birds stayed clear of him, sensing the unnatural essence that made him what he was: neither fully dead nor completely alive, but unimaginably dangerous. Only one bird stayed close, one that had been with Silas since before his second life had begun: his own black crow, perched upon his shoulder, ignoring the mass of feathers and death swooping down around them.
Silas rested a scarred hand against a chimneystack and cast his eyes around the market square. The wardens were not far away. From his viewing point he could see three of their black robes lurking nearby, daggers already drawn, blades shining in the rising sunlight. Those three were only the beginning. He had over a hundred more men stationed around the town, all waiting to make their move.
The last of the dying birds plunged into one of the market stalls and Silas watched the traders step out of their hiding places, each one nervously checking the sky for more birds. He sighed, wishing for once to face some kind of challenge . . . some form of resistance. Then the streets fell quiet, as if the entire town was holding its breath, and an unexpected sound carried to him on the wind. A flapping sound, like two strips of leather being clapped together. He looked up, his eyes darting straight to the roof of the little bookshop he had been told to watch more closely than the rest, and then he saw it.
His muscles tensed. There, rising from the bookshop’s chimney, was a black fluttering shape, trailing soot behind it as it awkwardly took flight.
Bird or bat? He had to be sure.
Bird or bat?
The flying creature turned in the air, rode upon an updraft and soared across the market square, over the heads of the traders and right past Silas, so close that he could have snatched it out of the air if he had tried.
“Bird,” he said, with a cruel smile.
The wardens were looking to him, waiting for instructions. Silas raised a hand and signaled the order they were all waiting for. The order to move in.
“The chimney!” cried Artemis. “Grab the bird. Quick!”
Edgar lunged forward but Artemis was already ahead of him, climbing up the shelves like a ladder. The blackbird watched them warily. Artemis made a wild grab for it, but he was too slow. The bird took flight, headed straight for the old cellar fireplace and fluttered up the chimney, searching for the sky. Edgar ducked in after it, waving his arms around blindly in the dark. When he re-emerged his face and hair were thick with soot, but his hands were empty.
Artemis stared at him. “If a warden sees