Page 52 of Threadbound

A soft caw.

By the time he finally got Bran free, it was clear that the injuries that had been inflicted on his human body were still present on his feathered one, and Jamie’s fingers had more than a little blood on them. But he had no idea how to bandage a bird.

Instead, he went and got a baking towel, one of the thin cotton ones that were cheap and plentiful in thrift shops, and wrapped that around Bran’s oblong bird body, carefully avoiding his wing. That, he had no idea what to do with.

“How am I going to carry you out there without attracting the attention of half the people on the street?” Jamie asked him, not really expecting an answer.

But Bran turned his head and looked at Jamie’s backpack, then back at Jamie. Then he cawed.

“You don’t seriously want me to put you in a backpack, do you?”

The caw Bran made was a little wavery.

“You don’t, but it’s probably the best idea?” Jamie guessed.

Another caw, this one stronger.

Jamie sucked in, then let out a heavy breath. “Okay. Backpack it is.”

Jamie had neverin his life felt as vulnerable as he did walking toward Greyfriars Kirkyard with a massive bird awkwardly stuffed in his backpack making small, pained noises as Jamie tried his best not to jostle the bag and its sensitive contents too much. Emotionally, he was torn between feeling terrible for Bran and wondering if there even was a bird-man-fairy-whatever in the backpack, or if he’d lost his mind and was carrying a sweatshirt or something to the Kirkyard in thedeepening light, having waited until the sun went down before attempting to break into a Churchyard.

Not having any experience breaking or entering, Jamie wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to get Bran into the Kirkyard—but he knew he’d have to figure it out somehow. Jamie also wasn’t quite familiar enough with Greyfriars to know where, exactly, Bran wanted to go. He’d saidthe trees in the back, but Jamie thought he remembered there being trees dotted around the Kirkyard in several places. It also wasn’t clear whatthe backmeant, given the size and shape of the thing.

So he was going to try to figure out how to somehow get over the Greyfriars’ wall and to the right place without being seen or arrested. Part of him wanted to ask Bran if he could help—fairies were supposed to be able to cast spells… or at least Jamie thought so. Then again, if Bran could have just cast a spell, he probably wouldn’t be dying and in need of Jamie’s bumbling help.

Jamie wished he’d paid more attention to his momma’s stories about fairies. Even if she got the name wrong.

Because clearly the milk-and-honey thing was athing—even if bookas or whatever didn’t like cities. Jamie certainly hadn’t lived in a city back in Maynardville, so it was entirely possible that if bookas were real, and not some figment of his brain melting into a puddle of goo, there had been bookas there.

Or maybe bookas were Scottish fairies? Fae. Whatever.

Jamie had so many questions.

And Bran was in no condition to answer any of them.

Maybe he never would be, either because he was dying—although Jamie really hoped not—or because he would go back to where he came from and not ever come back. Jamie couldn’t say that he’d blame Bran if he never wanted to set foot in the human world again, given that it had gotten him beaten bloody and poisoned.

Then Jamie wondered if Bran was dying because of something the hospital had given him when Jamie was gone, and that was a whole pile of guilt he really didn’t want to shoulder. Not that he had much choice. If he could save Bran by taking him to the Kirkyard and the tree, then that’s what he was going to do. Nevermind that it was well after the Kirkyard closed, and he was going to have to do something probably illegal and definitely sketchy in order to get Bran in there.

Jamie decided to head around the back of the Department of Communications, since it backed up to Greyfriars’ wall and probably wasn’t going to have a lot of traffic on a Tuesday night. His student ID would probably also provide an excuse for him being behind the building if he said he was cutting through—as long as he wasn’t seen scaling the actual wall.

Most of the building butted up directly against the Kirkyard wall, but there was a little bit in the back with an emergency exit that Rob used all the time for smoking breaks, so Jamie knew he could get out back there. The question remained whether or not he could get over the wall.

“You have to be quiet now,” he hissed back over his shoulder at Bran as he walked up the steps and through the front door of the building. There was no noise from the backpack, which either meant that Bran was listening to him, or that the fae was unconscious or dead. Jamie didn’t like either of those options, and he could feel his palms sweating as he contemplated what would happen if he did manage to get into the Kirkyard only to find a dead bird in his backpack. Or a sweatshirt.

He met no one on his way through the hallways of the Forrest Hill building, moving past the robotics lab and toward the back door. As he passed some weird, awkward looking chairs, he grabbed one, thinking that he might need the extra height to get himself up and over the wall.

No buzzer sounded when he pushed open the door—despite the warning sign on it—and Jamie breathed a sigh of relief even as he awkwardly pulled the chair out the door. The tiny area behind the building was empty other than dirt and a few leaves and twigs, and he definitely needed the chair. Even with the extra height, it was a struggle to pull himself up to the top of the wall, scraping his hands on the brick and mortar.

And then he had to contend with the fact that there was a very old mausoleum between him and the pathway of the Kirkyard. And he was sitting on a wall, very exposed. But he also didn’t want to go crashing through a fragile roof and into the remains of some centuries-old corpse.

A shudder rolled through him at the thought. Obviously—since he worked in the Surgeons’ Hall Museums—he wasn’t bothered by the proximity of the dead, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be covered in them.

A soft sound from his backpack added a little relief to the sour mixture of stress, anxiety, and adrenaline. At least Bran was still alive and hadn’t been too badly upset by Jamie’s very ungraceful clamber up the wall.

Several graves down was a tomb that had a flat brick roof, and Jamie figured that was probably a better bet than trying to drop down to one of the curved lower roofs. He knew enough to crawl over the reinforced sides of the vault, but at least that would give him a little more support than the fragile-looking arches. So he started carefully scooting his way down the row of sleeping dead, trying not to think about what it would sound like from their perspective—the scrape and rattle of the living passing overhead and disturbing their sleep.

By the time Jamie squirmed around so that he could slide down the far side of the vaults on his stomach—so that he wouldn’t crush Bran—he’d decided that he hated churchyards. He’d also decided that mausoleums and tomb vaults were stupidideas, and everyone should just be cremated and tossed to the winds. Or maybe composted in a grove of trees. That sounded nice and pleasant and unable to leave massive scratches on his knees and belly—the last because his shirt got caught on a piece of uneven brickwork as he slid over the edge, and he’d skinned his whole torso and hands before half-falling to the ground, his feet hitting hard enough to send pins and needles through his legs.

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