"He didn’t have time to grab anything. He simply ran."
"Then logically, he was carrying it all along."
Logically, yes. But I still couldn’t escape the itch that something about the whole situation was off.
"Then you need to listen to instinct," Azriel commented.
I sighed. "The trouble with that is that instinct isn’t giving me a whole lot more than vague feelings of unease."
"You’ll get more, if you give it time."
And time was something we didn’t seem to have a lot of. "Was his soul collected by a reaper?"
"No. His death did not follow the ordained order, so his soul will roam the wilderness between this world and the gray fields."
"Could you find it? Question it?"
"No. He is in the lost lands. I can see the lost ones, but I am not able—nor am I allowed—to communicate with them in any way." He paused. "But you might be able to. Adeline Greenfield said you had more of your mother’s talents than you were aware, and your mother communicated with both the dead and the lost ones."
"I might be able to see ghosts, but I’ve never known how to communicate with them. And right now we haven’t got the time for me to learn." Although if things kept going against us, I might just have to find the time. "Did Ilianna get her books and equipment okay?"
"Yes."
"So why didn’t you come riding to my rescue when I had the car accident?"
"Because the Raziq attacked us at the house."
I spun around. "What? Is Ilianna okay?"