Page 87 of Foul Days

Kosara licked her lips. Bad move, in this weather. It only made them drier.

“Another five minutes,” she said. “Then we’ll go.”

She didn’t think she had it in her, but somehow, she shovelled even faster. Every movement cut straight through her aching back. Each lump of soil felt heavier than the last.

“Found it!” Asen shouted at last. He scraped another layer of soil with the mattock, revealing the dark wood of the coffin’s lid.

“Oh, thank God.”

It was so dark now Kosara could barely make out Asen’s features as he fell to his knees and pulled on the lid. She joined him. The rotting wood crumbled away in her hands. The iron hinges were bright orange, corrosion bleeding out of them in large drops. Instead of opening, the lid snapped in half, cracking loudly in the quiet graveyard.

For a second, Kosara was too afraid to look in the grave. She was a witch—she’d seen plenty of dead people, sometimes many years after their funerals when they crawled out of their graves. It was the surprise of opening a coffin that always got her. She never knew what she’d find inside it, like the world’s worst name-day present.

Thankfully, not much was left of Algara. Most of her clothes had rotted away, and only her ivory buttons and golden jewellery remained. Her skull poked from above her many pendants, a gaping bullet hole in her forehead. A fat earthworm wriggled in one of her eye sockets.

Asen turned away, leaning against the headstone. Kosara couldn’t blame him. The stench of the grave was nauseating—of damp, mildew, and rot.

Algara’s hands were clutched in front of her chest, and in between them, something golden glinted. Kosara muttered an apology, just in case Algara’s ghost still lingered, before she removed the compass from between her bony fingers.

Kosara weighed the compass in her hand. It was still bright and shiny, as if it had been buried yesterday. The arrow pointing North trembled like a butterfly wing. A name was engraved on the lid: Blackbeard.

Kosara grinned as she dropped the compass in her coat’s inside pocket, buttoning it shut. After gripping the shovel all day, her fingers were red and painfully swollen. Her palms stung. Nevertheless, it had all been worth it—they had Blackbeard’s compass. The one thing he loved above all else. There was no way he’d refuse to help them now.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “Before the upirs arrive.”

“Not to alarm you, but I’m afraid we might be too late. Listen.”

Kosara listened, and she heard them: the scraping of their fingers on the frozen ground, the shuffling of their feet in the snow, the gurgling sound as they inhaled through the remnants of their nasal cartilage.

A second later, she saw their white figures creeping among the gravestones. Their teeth glistened in the moonlight.

Kosara had been too distracted by the compass to notice them earlier. A rookie mistake. Always keep vigilant when you’re in the graveyard during the Foul Days, every witch knew that.

Asen drew his revolver. “Should we maybe—”

“Run!”

Kosara climbed out of the grave, her fingers sinking into the soil, her feet sliding down the damp earth. She ran up the path towards the exit. Her shoes were heavy with clay from Algara’s grave. It stuck to her and pulled her down like an anchor.

More and more pale figures appeared between the headstones. Kosara could feel them probing at her mind, like burrowing worms. She pressed her temples with both her palms, as if that would help.

“Can you feel them?” she asked.

“Feel what?”

Thank God. She’d been worried Asen’s curse wouldn’t protect him against the upirs’ magic. This was terrible news in the long run, of course. He’d been enchanted by someone stronger than the samodivas and the upirs. But it was exactly what they needed right now.

A song rose in the distance, loud and out of tune. Kosara recognised her voice immediately. Nevena had always been a terrible singer.

Oh, dear God, not this, not now. Out of all her memories, the upirs had to dig out this one.

Then again, it hadn’t taken much digging. It had been at the back of Kosara’s mind all day—the last time she’d come to the graveyard during the Foul Days. It had been seven years ago, it had been a complete disaster, and it had been all Kosara’s fault.

“Listen,” she turned to Asen, realising a second too late she was shouting in order to drown a song only she could hear. She lowered her voice. “You have to keep me from going to them. It doesn’t matter what I tell you, it doesn’t matter how much I plead, you can’t let me go to them.”

“I won’t,” Asen said sincerely. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

They ran through the snowdrifts. The graveyard’s tall doorway rose ahead, with its cast-iron gargoyles perched on top, and beyond it flickered the lights of the city.

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