Page 21 of A Blade of Lies and Spirits

Good point; I hadn’t thought of that. “We could give them to it after they answer? It’s furious.”

His lips quirked. “I try to avoid letting spirits think they can demand lives. They get greedy.”

Kara whimpered. I turned my head.

Her eyes opened, bleary and unfocused. “It’ll live, but they’re twins now. I couldn’t keep the second trunk from growing,” she said clearly.

Her eyes rolled up and Chance braced as he took on her weight. Kara had staved off the immediate crisis, and I was going to tell her parents about it. She’d always been considered a magical deficient. I liked her older brother’s solution when someone called her a Mud. He understood that violence did, indeed, solve many problems.

If only it could solve this one.

Lower the water, so they tell us why.I spoke back mentally to the river spirit.

When are they mine?Flat and cold as it must be in the winter, the response did not indicate room for compromise.

The water crept down to their waists.

One, a disheveled but attractive brunette, demanded, “Get us out of here!” Her intonation was distinctly Quivyan. She appeared the oldest of that lot, in her early twenties. Her makeup had smeared in beige and black trails across her face.

Another I remembered from Durgion. Ellis; he’d carried the shrieker I broke. Still bare-chested, still struggling with acne. He thrashed in the river’s grip.

Walker’s focus shifted to Chance. “What happened?”

Chance rose to his feet, Kara cradled in his arms. “Sam Ackerson is the one who requested a field trip. Kara spotted a potential orchid, and I went with her to confirm it. I had no idea field trips for botany classes would be so exciting.”

Walker gestured him to continue.

“We heard the shrieker go off, then a scream, and came running back. Kara jumped for the spirit, and I followed. I was going to grab her and make a run for it if she couldn’t do anything to help, since the others were already trapped.” His eyes met Walker’s.

“The river wants recompense.” Cool and calm, Walker surveyed them. “But we only need one more person free, to tell us what really happened, so we know who to punish. Which of you is Sam? Who destroyed the willow? And why was a minor allowed to use a fully charged shrieker?”

Eyes widened among the teenagers in the river’s grip. As cocky as they were, this seemed to be the first moment they realized we weren't simply going to free them and make all of this go away. And once that hit them, their silence gave way to them all speaking at once.

Walker sorted the terror into coherent accounts with frightening efficiency. Sam, the middle teen peering with fearful excitement at the river, had suggested they go to the watershed to study the animals and willow stands—he’d heard stories that the willow spirits were very ‘friendly’.

I winced. They had sex professionals at home—why on earth would he be looking to inhuman entities for physical comfort?

Sam continued, his words a mess of shifting blame until he finally said, “Ellis was the one who brought the shrieker and used it on the willow.”

Several gazes turned to a teenager with light brown hair, dark eyes, and a thin frame. His clothes were obviously made of very fine, very expensive material, and from the look on his face, he wasn’t used to ever getting in trouble. Or ever having to answer for his actions. And given the fact that this was my second interaction with the punk being violent, he definitely didn’t think he’d get in trouble for this either.

Tough luck, idiot.

“I didn’t know it would kill anything real." Ellis had started shaking as he spoke. Scared now, his replacement weapon was as broken as the tree he’d shot at. “M-m-mom can p-pay for a new one…” he mumbled, stumbling over words as they flew over his lips.

But his words and his body didn't match the look in his eyes. There was something there. Something…wrong.

I wobbled closer to Ellis, my mind screaming for me to find the truth. Walker, brow raised, helped me to the teen's side.

“None of this feels right,especiallynot this boy,” I said. The roar and wash of the river in the back of my head almost drowned out the teenagers’ more fragile emanations. Feathery flickers of something else, concentrated on the more violent of the teens.

So, it wasn't just the boy. Something had infected, changed, several of these kids. But what? And how? Outside of the demon, I'd never felt anything like this before.

Even though this wasn't another demon.

Ellis tried to shrink back as I touched my bare wet fingers to his cheek. They left streaks of loam and mud, but I didn't focus on that, I focused on what was hidden from me.

Another’s magic, almost dissipated, woven through the weft of his emotions. “Can you see it?” I asked.

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