Page 45 of Soul of Shadow
After letting the vätte scramble into the house, she stepped inside and shut the door quietly behind herself—only to look up and find her mother standing in the hallway, arms crossed in front of her chest.
“Hi,” Charlie said, praying in vain that there would be no interrogation.
Her mother looked Charlie over, from the toes of her damp shoes to the bandage around her calf to the frizzy ends of her wet hair. The frown lines in her face deepened with every passing second. With a glance at the floor, Charlie noticed the mud still caked on her shoes, a stray leaf clinging to her sock.
Crap.
“Charlotte,” her mom said at last, and that was when she knew she was in trouble. “Did we not have a conversation about not going into the woods?”
“I didn’t go into the woods,” she blurted, her stomach clenching.
Her mom raised her eyebrows. Charlie was not the type to lie; she followed the rules, even told her mother when she was at parties where there was drinking. There was an unspoken trust between them. A pact of honesty.
A pact she had just broken.
“No?” Her mom glanced down at her shoes. “Then where were you?”
“At Lou’s,” she said, digging the hole deeper. “Me, her, and Abigail were hanging out in her backyard doing homework, when her dad came out with the hose and sprayed us down. He thought it was hilarious.” She rolled her eyes for effect. “You know how Mr. Fisher is.”
Charlie was surprised at how easily the lies came to her. How quickly she was able to piece together a fake story. Though a large part of her felt guilt at lying to her mother, another part—one she didn’t want to acknowledge—felt a perverse sense of pride at her storytelling.
Shelikedlying.
Was Elias right about her? Was she not as mild as she thought?
Was she, at her core, someone who enjoyed the thrill of deception?
This thought was so disturbing to Charlie that she had to make a quick exit from the conversation. After swearing to her mother that she had not gone into the forest—and promising for a second time that she would not do so in the future, a lie she knew she would break within the day—she darted up the stairs and into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
One searing-hot shower and a fresh pair of pajamas later, Charlie emerged into her bedroom, rubbing a towel through her hair. She started to throw the towel onto the foot of her bed, then realized that someone was already lying there.
“You.” She pointed at the vätte, whose little body was nestled into a fold in the blanket. “Floor. Now. I’ll give you a pillow and towel to sleep under.”
In response, the vätte turned around so that his face and hat burrowed into the blanket.
Sighing, Charlie sat on the edge of her bed and yanked on the blanket until the vätte popped out of the fold. Caught momentarily upside-down, his tiny arms waved in circles until he was able to flop over onto his back. This position provided Charlie with her first view of his feet. Or, at least, the place where his feetshouldhave been. Instead, the gray tunic that he always wore had no hole at the bottom, as if it were more of a sack. She saw no indents where feet should have been, no evidence of legs at all. Which raised the question—how on earth did the vätte walk?
Before she could ask, the little guy was up again and waddling across the blanket toward the pillows. When he reachedthe place where the duvet was folded over, where Charlie normally slipped into bed, he dove under the blanket and burrowed around until his hat and round, milky-white button nose popped back out.
He had assumed the position; he was ready for bed.
Charlie tapped her hand on her hip twice. “Fine,” she said at last. “You can stay foroneepisode of whatever I watch. But then it’s onto the floor.”
The vätte just twitched his nose.
After fetching her laptop from her desk, she slid under the covers and opened the computer between them. Intrigued, the vätte scooted farther up onto the pillows, giving himself a better view of the screen. With what eyes, Charlie didn’t know, because his hat was permanently pulled down to the top of his nose. She didn’t ask.
“What should we watch?” she asked, flipping through the row of her most-watched TV shows on Netflix. “Lucifer?New Girl?Wednesday?The Originals?” She clicked to the right once more, and the vätte let out an excited squeak.
Charlie squinted at the show they’d landed on. “Seriously?” She glanced at the vätte. “The Witcher? That’s, like, one of the most violent shows on this platform.”
The vätte only clapped.
After a short pause, Charlie shrugged. “You asked for it.”
Though the first episode of the show is objectively terrifying—it begins with the main character battling a giant spider creature—the vätte didn’t act afraid. Frankly, he wasenthralled, never looking away from the screen and clapping gleefully when the monster died. As the episode progressed, he appeared particularly obsessed with the main character, played by a ridiculouslybuff Henry Cavill. Every time his character stabbed someone, the vätte let out a squeal that sounded almost like a cheer.
“You’re a sick little bastard, huh?” Charlie asked, grinning in amusement. “Who’d have guessed?”
