Page 44 of Court of Shadows
“Are you lost?” I asked.
“No.” She broke off the song with a giggle, those dark, pretty eyes fixed on me. “Are you?”
She beckoned me closer and I went, certainly in love. I had never wanted to hold a person so much, to feel their body pressed close, to know their touch, their scent.... Her eyes had sunk hooks into mine and I easily scaled the boulder she sat on, feelinga strange, silky tendril snaking along my legs. I dropped the satchel. What did the book matter when this being existed?
“What is your name?” I asked, desperate. “I must know it.”
With one finger under my chin she smiled, showing me three sets of pointed teeth. That was beautiful, too, and just the brush of her fingertip felt as if it could cure me of all ills. “Talai,” she cooed, “but you will only live to say it once.”
Her long black hair had wrapped around my ankles. I could feel it tightening there, holding me, and then more of it slithered across my arms and up to my shoulders, trapping me like a silken black web.
“Talai,” I repeated, but her spell was beginning to break. The too-tight hold of her hair around my legs and arms shocked me back to myself and I struggled, yanking my limbs this way and that. She only smiled wider in the face of my panic and tears, moonlight sparkling on her many, many teeth.
She began to pull me closer, closer, and nothing I did ended her steely grip. Out of the corner of my eye I saw another snaking tendril of hair wrap around my satchel and pick it up. It was out of my reach, and I screamed, hoping that Khent in his vigilance would wake and bring help. I had failed us both with my foolishness, and now this creature had the book....
Her breath, foul and sharp, washed over me. I gagged and closed my eyes, unwilling to watch the horror of her face coming near. That huge, devouring mouth was on me, sealing to my face like a leech, unbearably sharp teeth tearing into my skin. She wassilencing me, silencing me forever, though still I screamed and screamed into her throat.
The forest floor shook under us, and for a moment I felt reprieve. The creature froze, the lightest, stinging kiss of its teeth prickling against my flesh. I could not breathe the hot sour air in its mouth, but at least it had been distracted by the noise. Then the clamor came again, and again, trees around us swaying as if knocked about by a giant. From behind came an ear-rending scream, a canine shriek as if a hundred jackals howled in unison.
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
Footsteps. What greater terror had come to finish me and this monster off together? I went limp in the creature’s grasp, crying harder as the boulder under us trembled, threatening to dislodge and send us tumbling to the ground. But I did not tumble—in fact, I was lifted, not by the unnatural hairs of the singing creature but by hands, massive ones, strong and almost human.
Then I was tossed aside, ripped out of one creature’s grasp and thrown by another’s. I rolled onto the springy grass of the forest and panted, flipping onto my back and scuttling into the cover of the trees. The thing that had saved me was taller than the tallest man, covered in mottled gray-and-black fur with a stripe down its back and large, pointed ears. Blessed earth, it was impossible to believe my eyes, but I had seen such a thing before, hundreds, thousands of times—it was Anubis himself, not stone but flesh. Stranger still, its shoulders and arms, muscled like a man’s, had faint markings beneath the fur. Khent’s markings.
Talai shrieked at it, hissing, standing on top of the boulder fearlessly and flinging herself at it teeth-first. The jackal creature—Khent, or so I hoped, for I did not want to be its next target—caught Talai easily by her throat and squeezed, wringing a wet, gagging cry from her. He slammed her into the boulder, and though she was stunned, she quickly gained her feet and backed away, toward the trees, hissing and spitting, her neck already blackened with bruising.
Anubis reborn gave chase, following after the woman as she dashed into the darkness. I heard a terrible roar and another scream, and then the sounds of their battling grew fainter and fainter, until at last I was alone with the quiet bubbling of the brook. Bleeding, terrified, I climbed to my feet and scrambled after the satchel, lifting it with both hands and limping back toward the herder’s shack.
I found it in splinters, nothing but our cloaks left among the shards.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Ineed you to skip to the end.”
Mr. Morningside paged through my latest translation, a piece of iced lemon cake in front of him, which he diligently ate in between appraisals of my work.
“This is all fine, excellent, really, but I must know where it ends,” he said, slapping the packet of papers down onto the desk in front of me. My eyes hurt from squinting in the candlelight for so long, and my fingertips were stained with ink. I sat back and stared numbly at the journal, my head swirling with questions. “Where do they go?” Mr. Morningside added. “Where do they stop? Find that and translate it. The rest,” he said, flicking his brows and stabbing his dessert, “is just icing on the cake, my dear.”
I glared up at him, annoyed by his cheery demeanor.
“My father is here, did you know that?” I asked, crossing my arms over my middle. “You never wrote to him....”
“I was planning on it.”
“You never wrote to him.” I scoffed and looked away from him, choosing to stare instead into the blue flames in the library’s fireplace. “I can’t believe this.”
“Which part?” he asked, finishing the cake and licking the crumbs from his fingers.
“All of it.” I gave up, piling my forearms on the desk andresting my forehead on them.
Mr. Morningside gave me a patronizing pat on the shoulder and stood from where he had been perched on the desk. “You wanted him here and now he’s here, Louisa. I really don’t see the problem. Do you want me to try talking to him?”
“No,” I mumbled. “You will only make it worse.”
“That’s harsh.” He paced in front of the desk; I could hear his riding boots pitter-pattering across the rug. “Is this going to be too much of a distraction for you? It does not matter how persuasive the shepherd finds those journal entries—at some point you will be asked to speak and I need you at your best.”
I dragged my head up off the table and gave him my most hollow-eyed stare. “Do I look like I am at my best?”
