Page 77 of Soul of Shadow
His lips nestled close to her ear. “Why do you think I’ve been stalling all weekend?” he whispered. “Why do you think I suddenly became so uninterested in the disappearances? I figured it out, Charlie. I broke the code. I know what the Fenrir is doing.”
“You—” She swallowed. “But those kids who disappeared—”
“Dead,” he said with finality. “All of them. Human sacrifices sent to the realm of Muspelheim. To the fire creature, Surtur.”
“No,” she whispered.
“There was nothing you could have done to help them,” said Elias, and she thought she heard a note of sadness in his voice—though she might have been painting her own emotions over his. “They’re gone, and he’ll need more sacrifices. Hundreds more. And I—” He shoved Charlie away. She crashed into a desk, grunting as pain shot up her pelvis. When she spun back around, Elias stood in the corner with one hand on Lou’s shoulder. “Am going to bring him another.”
“No,” she whispered again. She tried to lunge for them but stopped when Elias pulled a knife from his suit pocket and held it to Lou’s throat. “You can’t—”
“I can.” His eyes were mere slits now. Compressed with a sort of frenetic intensity that she had never seen before. “I will bring your friend to the Fenrir, and I will offer her to the wolf to be sent to Surtur. And if one offering isn’t enough for the Fenrir, I’ll bring him however many more he needs to give me the location of the Seal. I know where he’s hiding. And if you try to do anything to stop me from getting there, I will slit Lou’s throat.”
Charlie was trembling now. With fear or rage, she wasn’t certain, but as a low, soft hammering began on the door—the vätte’s little fist, no doubt—she felt completely at a loss. She couldn’t make a move without risking Lou’s life. She had to let Elias go.
Yes. She had to let him go.
And then she would follow him.
It was a weak plan. She had no idea how to follow Eliaswithout being seen, and she had no backup to help her steal Lou away when she did. But she would figure it out.
She had to.
Watching her carefully, Elias lowered the blade from Lou’s throat. When Charlie didn’t make a move, he nodded. “Good. Stay right there.” He reached behind himself with his free hand and unlocked the classroom door. “Now. Lou.”
Her friend only blinked in response.
“Go.”
Like a robot, she pivoted on the spot and pushed open the door, exiting the classroom.
On the hallway floor, the vätte squawked in surprise and stumbled backward. Lou tromped past Charlie, zombie-like, and headed down the hallway, toward the front door of the school. The vätte pushed himself upright, glancing back and forth between Elias and Charlie in confusion.
“Excellent,” said Elias. He reached into his shirt and pulled out the chain he always wore around his neck. The one Charlie could now see held a thin silver whistle.
“What’s—” she started to ask, but then Elias flipped the whistle up to his lips and blew on it, hard. She clapped her hands over her ears, expecting a loud blast, but nothing happened. She heard no sound at all.
She lowered her hands from her ears. “What was that?”
“A draugar call,” he said merrily, tucking the whistle into his shirt. “A little something to keep you occupied while I go find the Fenrir. Make sure you don’t follow me.”
Charlie’s heart sank. A draugar. A draugar was coming. “That’s a death sentence.”
“Maybe.” Elias shrugged. “You can fight it using the kitchenknife I felt hidden in your dress when we were making out.” He raised his hand to his forehead in a two-finger salute. “Bye now.”
Then he turned and followed Lou down the hallway, leaving Charlie with nothing but a pounding heart and the tinny pulse of music far, far away.
33
Charlie tore out the front doors of the school. She turned right, running down the steps and onto the lawn. Then she dove into the nearest bush.
A draugar was coming. Maybe even more than one. And in the thirty seconds she’d had to formulate a plan, the only thing she could come up with waskeep it away from the dance. After all, the last draugar she faced had been able to interact with the human world; what was to stop this one from ravaging the entire crowd of students and chaperones in the gym?
Before leaving the school, she’d shut the vätte in a broom closet. He had squeaked with obvious disapproval, but she whispered through the door that she didn’t want him getting hurt. That he was to wait there until she returned.
If she returned at all.
But she couldn’t think about that right now. She needed to plan. Her best bet for keeping the dance safe, as far as she could tell, was to hide on the front lawn and distract the creature before it even made it in the front door. She hunkered down in the dirt, not caring that her dress would be filthy.
