Witching Time (The Wild Hunt #14) - Yasmine Galenorn Page 0,68
ass to the wall for this. She deserves jail, if nothing else. What about the father? Is there any way to prove what she did to him?”
“Afraid not,” Herne said. “For one thing, we only suspect that she turned him into a wight. We can only speculate.” He looked as dejected as I did. “However, we did find out that there was blood on the statue of Reyas, and as far as we know, it matches her husband’s blood type. He had his blood drawn when he was in the military before they met and they always type your blood and put it on your dog tags.”
“So, we can pretty much rule out that he’s alive…other than as a wight. With his blood on the statue, you know that he probably didn’t give it willingly.” I frowned, trying to think of what to do next. “So, have you got any idea of how I can take on this creature? We have to break Marigold out of his control.”
“How do you catch an invisible predator?” Ember said. “Can you… I know this sounds ridiculous, but can you spray him with paint so that you at least have some idea of what he looks like? Or maybe, there’s something that will dispel his invisibility?”
“The problem with that is this: he’s not actually invisible,” Herne said. “Autumn wights fade; they don’t just use a spell to vanish from sight. They literally fade into a corporeal energy being. You can’t see him, because he’s faded in between the worlds. So it’s doubtful that any anti-invisibility spell will work. And as far as throwing paint on him—again, he exists between worlds, although he can become corporeal when he wants to. Chances are the paint won’t touch him.”
“I said it sounded ridiculous,” Ember muttered. She shook her head. “Is there any way for us to go ‘between’ the worlds? To move into the Between, so to speak?”
Herne glanced over at her. “Yes, there is, but it’s dangerous.”
I jerked my head up. “We can move between?”
“I think so. Hold on.” Herne jumped up and hustled out of the room.
Ember turned to me. “How are you doing?”
“I’m good, just worried about Marigold. This has to be taking a tremendous toll on the kids, on the farm, on Rain, and Marigold too. What happens if an autumn wight drains someone of all their energy? Because he has a hold on Marigold and nobody’s mentioned what will eventually happen to her if we don’t knock that wight back into the land where it came from. I mean, I know that his control on her will continue, but…”
“But what eventually happens?” Ember let out a sigh. “I’m not sure. Let me go get Yutani and his computer. He can probably find out.”
A moment later she returned with Yutani, who was carrying one of his office laptops. He immediately sat at the table and began typing away. I didn’t interrupt—he was either finishing up something he had been working on, or Ember had already told him about the issue, and he was looking up the answer. Either way, I didn’t want to distract him.
“Ah, here we go,” he said after a moment. “I’m not sure if this applies to all wights, or just autumn wights.” He leaned back. “When someone is turned into a wight and they begin to fade, they do travel into the Between. They’ll spend days there, not realizing how long they’ve been gone. Eventually, they never fully come back. Now, wights retain a physical presence, so they exist on two levels at once.”
“Can they breed?”
“Only true to type, and it’s rare. Actually, most wights—of any kind—are created through either ritual or through being attacked by another wight. If you’re bitten or scratched by a wight—anything to break the skin—there’s a chance you’ll become infected with the disease they carry. So, if the autumn wight attacked anybody else over the years, there may be other autumn wights on the land. You might not be dealing with just one.”
“Crap.” I didn’t want to even think about that. “How do we find them? Because short of hauling in a massive search team, I’m not sure what to do. Especially since we can’t see them.” A thought occurred to me. I turned to Yutani. “You might know the answer to this. Is there a way to use some sort of sound or light frequency to root them out of hiding?”