Dachev surveyed the village once, then headed back into the woods. Bird-man stayed where he was. Wonderful. It was almost dark now, and from the blackness of the village, I guessed these guys didn’t have candles. Although a full moon shone overhead, it barely pierced the forest. One more once-over and Dachev would have to return to his house and wait for me there. Time for a new plan.
I eased along my branch and grabbed a vine looped around the tree trunk. When I yanked hard, the vine snapped in two. I shimmied down a branch and found a thicker one, which held no matter how hard I whaled on it. I unwound it from the branch, then found a second piece for backup.
After coiling the vines into balls, I started to put one into my pocket, then felt the hellsbane potion vial and stopped, envisioning myself yanking out the vines and the bottle tumbling into the undergrowth and forgotten. Instead, I tied them around my calf. Next I took off a sock and stuffed it into my empty pocket.
I shimmied down the tree until I reached the lowest branch that would hold me. I inched out as far as I dared. The leafy cover of the lower branches hid me well enough. I broke off a twig and dropped it. It caught in the lowest branch. I pulled off another, reached out as far as I could, and dropped it. This one hit the dry undergrowth and sent up a crackle that seemed as loud as a gunshot. Bird-man popped up from his hiding place. He looked around, gaze on the ground, head jerking as he searched. I let loose another twig. He took a step my way. Then another. A third step, and I dropped onto him.
As I fell onto his back, I slammed my forearm into his mouth. He bit down, hard enough to make me wonder whether I was going to lose another chunk. It took some wrangling, but I managed to get my flesh out of his mouth, and replace it with my sock. Once I’d bound him, I lashed him to the tree trunk with the loose end of the vine. Eventually his moaning and thrashing would alert Dachev, but I’d have a few minutes.
I followed the forest as close to Dachev’s house as I could. With the full moon, I didn’t dare go around to the front door, so I crept up to the open side window. As I crawled through, I heard someone moving through the forest. I somersaulted inside, hitting the floor with a boom, then sprang to my feet. I was in the living room. Dachev said the crawl-space hatch was under his bed. I ran through the only doorway, and into the bedroom, grabbed the bed frame, and yanked. No rollers, of course. I dragged the bed aside, then grasped the edge of the hatch. Running footsteps thumped along the dirt road. I yanked open the hatch and jumped through.
43
TO CALL DACHEV’S BASEMENT A CRAWL SPACE WOULD imply that it was big enough to crawl in. To even turn around, I had to scrunch down and duck my head.
Although the full moon had illuminated enough upstairs to see by, even with the open hatch, it was pitch black down here. I cast a light-ball spell. It lasted less than a second, just long enough to stamp an impression of dirt walls on my retinas before sputtering out. I cast it again. Same thing. I’d always thought of this as a child’s spell, and had used it so little that I hadn’t even bothered passing it on to Savannah. Since arriving in the nonelectrical ghost world, though, I’d used the spell regularly, so there must have been something about the conditions underground that were making the light go out. I tried it twice more, then gave up.
Dachev had said the book was on a shelf to the left, immediately under the hatch. The only thing I could feel there was a web of thin roots. As I ran my hands over them, the front door slammed. I wriggled around as fast as I could, and swept my hands across the right side, then the end wall. My fingers snagged on the roots and my nails filled with dirt, but I could feel nothing like a shelf or a book.
I cast the light-ball spell again. Then again. And again. Each time I cast, I