walked along, Jordan called Llew while I called my father.
Curikan picked up on the second ring. “Are you all right? I had a bad feeling earlier and have been worried sick.”
“You weren’t wrong, but yes, I’m okay now. I almost wasn’t. Have you come up with any possibilities?”
“Yeah, I found about five possibilities. You want me to read them off?”
“First, before you do that, can any of them turn invisible?” That could easily narrow it down. If none of them could, then we were dealing with something incredibly rare. Most all Cryptos were listed in Beltan’s Bestiary.
My father paused, then said, “One of them is listed as ‘might as well be invisible.’ ”
“Then that’s probably what we’re dealing with. What is it?”
He hesitated, then said, “You’d better put me on speaker phone. I really, really hoped it wouldn’t be this creature.”
“All right, hold on.” I glanced over at Jordan, who was just closing his phone. “You called Llew?”
He nodded. “He and the guard are on their way.”
“All right. Curikan—my father—wants us on speaker phone. He may know what we’re dealing with.” I stopped, looking around to find a nearby rock large enough to sit on. I sat down, while the men gathered around me. I punched the speaker option and held out my phone. “You’re on, Dad.”
Curikan cleared his throat. “In the research I did, I found one creature that…it might as well be invisible. I’ll explain that in a moment. It hibernates most of the year except during the autumn, and when it comes out, it’s ravenous. It feeds on life energy, and it can control weaker individuals.”
“What is it? And it must be long-lived if it’s been here forty years or more.” I wondered if it had killed Aida. I had been thinking her father killed her, but maybe I was wrong.
“Oh, it’s long-lived. It’s a specific form of land wight. It’s connected to farming cultures, and—you’ll love this—while some are naturally born, the majority are actually created.”
I stared at the phone. “Say what?”
“You heard me right. Most autumn wights are created when someone is sacrificed to Reyas, an obscure harvest lord worshipped by a few of the ancient Fae and some of the magic-born. He requires human sacrifice, and that person is used as a scarecrow in the fields. The sacrifice isn’t exactly killed…” My father paused, and I could hear the hesitation in his voice.
“Go ahead,” Kipa said.
“The sacrifice is punctured using needles, so he—and specifically, only males are sacrificed—so he has hundreds of tiny wounds. He’s tied to a stake in the fields, and his aura frightens off the crows. As the blood seeps out into the earth, Reyas very slowly turns the sacrifice into an autumn wight who is then tied to the land. The wight won’t hurt the family that originally summoned it, but anybody else is fair game. Over the years, he fades—literally—and becomes invisible.”
My stomach churned. “You mean this creature is still alive?”
“Yes. And as I said, only men are sacrificed. Women are considered to be representative of the goddess because of their wombs—they create life. They are left untouched by the god.”
“Then who killed Aida?” I frowned. “And who’s the wight?”
By then, Llew and the others had shown up. I asked my father to repeat what he said. After he was done, I looked over at Llew. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know why Aida was killed, but my guess is that the father who vanished might have been offered as a sacrifice.”
“Holy crap. That would mean that the father is still here, alive.” I thought for a moment. “Dad, can these autumn wights control others, or possess them?”
“Not in the normal sense of a possession, but they can change behavior and if there’s any tendency for mental illness, the autumn wight’s mere presence can trigger it. Once it has corded into a person, however, their influence extends as long as the wight is alive. Once the wight is killed, then anyone affected should go back to normal.”
Crap. That meant if we couldn’t find the wight and dispatch it, Marigold might never be free.
“Then if we catch and kill the wight, Marigold should be able to snap out of it, right? She might need counseling, but she’d be back to herself, more or less?”
“I suppose so, but there isn’t much here about them because the autumn wights are rare and… Oh.” He paused.
“What is it?” Kipa asked, leaning toward the phone.
“They can be summoned by a powerful earth witch.” Curikan