Page 41 of The Mirror of Beasts

I nodded, swiping a loose strand of hair out of my face. If I let myself think about it, if I let myself replay the memory of Hemlock’s death, I recognized other faces too. Other Hollowers from our guild.

I just didn’t know what any of it meant, other than the universal truth of assholes always seeming to find one another.

“He has reached the end of his usefulness,” Caitriona said. “I say we cut him loose now.”

Neve glanced at me. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking.”

I sighed. “That’s because I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

I could have said, then and there, that it was time for him to leave, but I couldn’t seem to summon the words from the icy depths of my chest.

Where could he go? Back to his mother, maybe. Into hiding. Certainly not back home to the Summerland estate, where his father could find him.

Hours later, the question was still circling my mind as I watched him from across the pub. He sat near the head of the bar’s dragon, his head braced against his hand. He’d helped himself to some whiskey, but by the look of it, he’d had as much of his drink as I’d had of mine.

“What’s on your mind, Olwen?” Neve asked, finally breaking the thick silence.

The priestess straightened in her chair, trying to put on a reassuring smile as she fed Griflet a bit of fish we’d scavenged from the pub’s refrigerator.

“I’ve been thinking about death magic,” Olwen said. “The way it transformed Hemlock’s soul—it corrupted it, didn’t it? I thought he could only collect the souls of the wicked dead, those bound for Annwn.”

“He might not be able to harvest death magic from them,” I said, “but it looks like his crown allows him to control all souls. Including those belonging to the living.”

Seeing the way Lord Death had manipulated the riders and Hemlock’s soul had only deepened my certainty that Cabell was under the sway of his magic.

“Then why didn’t he control all of us in Avalon that way? He went to so much trouble to get us to perform the ritual …” Neve trailed off as she took in my expression. “I’m not saying Cabell isn’t in his thrall. I just don’t understand his choice.”

“Cabell wasn’t … he wasn’t himself,” I said. “He might have been more susceptible to that magic.”

“He couldn’t have influenced the Avalonians without one of us noticing,” Caitriona said, running a finger along the grain of the tabletop. “Especially one of our sisters.”

The ghost of that word, sisters, haunted the silence that followed.

“I don’t know,” Olwen said, with an apologetic look at me. “If he could master souls within our living bodies, why would he need to kill Hemlock to add her to his ranks?”

The question left a queasy feeling in my stomach. “Because he wants revenge. He wants to humiliate the sorceresses the way they humiliated him. He wants to kill them. There are a million reasons.”

Caitriona’s skeptical grunt carried just as much meaning as if she had put her disbelief into words.

“What?” I pressed her, that same sinking feeling from our last argument returning. “You don’t agree?”

Caitriona jolted with a sharp “Ow!” as Neve not so subtly kicked her shin under the table. The sorceress lowered her brows and gave the other girl a look that made my soul shrink inside my skin.

“I only meant …” Caitriona cleared her throat. “That perhaps there is something in the hunt that … calls to the nature of his other self. The hound. And that is how Lord Death keeps his hold on him.”

“No,” I said firmly. I knew in my bones that wasn’t right. “His humanity would rebel against that.”

But Caitriona didn’t look convinced.

“Are you giving up on him?” I asked quietly, trying not to let her expression crush me.

“No—no,” she said quickly. “Of course not.”

The locks on the pub’s door clicked open, finally ending the grim line of questioning. The bundled-up Bonecutter was swept inside by a gust of freezing air, followed closely by a human Bran.

She stamped the snow from her boots and unwound her woolly scarf with one hand. In her other fist was a velvet sack with a dark stain spreading across the bottom of it. The liquid dripped to the floor, but more alarming, the bag’s contents were still wriggling around.

I really, truly did not want to know.

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