Page 30 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 1

“Right, of course. Silly me.” Something was off. Gabriel wasn’t quite making eye contact. Every time I managed to catch his gaze directly, he looked away. I would’ve sworn the first time it happened, he flinched.

I’d spent a lot of my time over the past few years trying to get people to tell me things they didn’t want to tell me, and there were two methods that worked best for me. One was silence. People got twitchy if there was too much quiet in a conversation, especially if I kept all my focus on them. They started to talk to fill the silence, and more often than not the thing they were trying their hardest not to think about was what popped out of their mouths. The other method was throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall. Pulling someone into a conversation, keeping them talking until something slipped out. Gabriel struck me as the type who was used to silence, which left me with option number two.

“That bag is, uh… interesting,” I said.

“I had to purchase some supplies for this expedition. The shopkeeper told me this bag was the ideal option for carrying them all. It shrinks down the objects placed inside.”

“The shopkeeper told you that, huh?” I frowned. “And how much did you pay for that thing?”

Gabriel named a number, and I let out a startled laugh. His brow furrowed. I crouched and ran a hand over the surface of the backpack, letting the vibrations of the magic show me their shape. I looked up at Gabriel, and only then realized that I’d basically just knelt at his feet. He took a half-step backward, his purple eyes going wide.

“You got scammed,” I said, getting to my feet. “The enchantment on this thing is a mess. That spell is fine for something stationary, but it’s fragile. If you cast it on something that’ll be jostled around, or something that might get damaged, it can get really bad really fast.”

“Bad in what sense?” Gabriel asked.

“Bad in the sense that if this thing catches on a branch and tears a few stitches, everything inside it will return to its normal size all at once. Explosively.”

I got the sense that if Gabriel had any blood flow to his face, he would’ve gone pale. As it was, he just grimaced slightly. “Ah,” he said faintly. “I can see how that would be an issue.”

“I’ve seen it happen,” I told him. “Well, I’ve seen the aftermath. I had a case where a witch cast that spell on a bag, gave it to the person cheating on her, and then paid off someone to snip the fabric of the bag. And it was a fanny pack, so, you know, right around the…” I gestured vaguely at my own crotch, and Gabriel’s grimace got much more pronounced.

“That seems, ah, effective,” he said weakly.

“Very,” I said. “The owners of the bar where it happened had to clean the ceiling.”

“Yet another crisis that could have been averted by refusing to wear a fanny pack,” Gabriel said, making it sound as though he was repeating some piece of sage advice. I laughed, and his grimace faded.

“Let’s put all the stuff you packed in my bag,” I said, holding out the bottomless tote. “Today’s going to be long enough without worrying about exploding.”

Once everything had been transferred over, Gabriel grabbed the bag before I could and slung it over his own shoulder.

“Let me,” he said. “Vampiric strength, and all that.”

One time I’d borrowed the tote to help with a move, and when I’d packed my entire apartment into it, it still weighed about five pounds. But, hey, if he was going to insist on being a gentleman, I would let him carry it.

“Come on,” I said. “We should head out. We have a long way to go.”

The path we took wasn’t one the joggers and dog-walkers went for. It was heavily shadowed, with the trees growing close together. The markings on the birch bark made it look as though there were hundreds of ancient eyes staring down at us. Their leaves were turning, but instead of the fiery orange of most birch trees, they were golden yellow.

“That’s odd,” Gabriel murmured, brushing a hand along one thick trunk. “I thought this species of birch was extinct.”

“You recognize these?” I asked.

Gabriel shrugged, still examining the tree. “When you live for hundreds of years, you tend to pick up a lot of hobbies. For a while, I was very interested in the study of forests. These are blind man’s birch. The wood is an exceptionally good conduit for magic. Soothsayers would pay a fortune for a set of runes carved from these trees. The wood was used for magical prosthetics at first, but soon people began to use it for toys. Diversions for the rich and powerful. Dollhouses with dolls that would move on their own, carved dragons that would actually fly… that sort of thing. I’d thought that all the trees were gone.”

His voice had taken on a wistful note. I watched him smile slightly to himself as he looked up at the golden canopy of leaves far above us.

“I’m glad I got to see these,” he said, turning that small smile on me. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad I got to have an impromptu history lesson.”

The path grew more and more shadowy as we went deeper into the forest. The tall, straight blind man’s birches gave way to twisty, dark-barked trees with tangled branches. The underbrush was thick and reached up so far it began to grow into the leaves of the trees. It felt as though a hedge maze had grown all on its own, making a twisting path through the forest.

“Careful,” I said, grabbing Gabriel’s arm just before his sleeve could snag on a thorn-covered branch. The muscle of his bicep was very solid beneath the soft wool of his jacket. His eyes flicked down to the spot where my hand was resting on his arm, and I let go like I’d been burned.

The landscape became more and more unwelcoming, with pathways through the brush that got narrower and narrower. I wasn’t a very claustrophobic person, but anxiety crept up the back of my throat.

“Maybe we got turned around,” I said. “We should backtrack.”

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