Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(13)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

The muggy night air and stench of hawthorn berries beckoned, drawing me outside. But something made me look back just once more, to see Emrys on his hands and knees frantically picking up the shards of glass in the instant before the door shut.

 

 

 

 

 

My feet carried me swiftly down the path, seeking the safety of lights and milling crowds on Bourbon Street. Cabell looked up at the sound of my steps, alarmed. The gate swung open in front of me and I rushed through, hooking him by the arm and dragging him back up the alleyway.

 

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

 

I tugged on my right earlobe, our signal for Not now, someone could be listening.

 

I didn’t stop until we were surrounded by hundreds of people out carousing in the streets, stumbling in and out of bars. Rainbow lights strobed around us as we snaked our way through the crowds, heading back in the direction of the Vein we’d opened with the All Ways door.

 

Music pulsed until I was sure I could feel the bass line thrumming in my blood. Finally, I couldn’t wait any longer and pulled him into a shop of junky tourist gifts and fake voodoo candles.

 

Cabell gripped my shoulders, searching my face, then the rest of me. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

 

“I’m fine!” I said, raising my voice over the music. “Listen, Dye was there—”

 

“What?” he shouted, gesturing to his ears. “Dye?”

 

“He’s working a job for her, but she offered it to us, too,” I said. “If we can get it first, pay is a hundred times this job!”

 

He waved me off. “I thought you just said a hundred times—”

 

“I did!” I glanced at a swaying couple as they entered the store. “It’s for something called the Servant’s Prize? I think we should go to the library tonight and—”

 

This time, I knew he had heard me. His expression shuttered and he swung back to the street, stalking toward the waiting Vein.

 

“Hey!” I said. “This is an incredible opportunity.”

 

“No, it’s not,” he said, his face harder than I’d ever seen it. His skin glistened with sweat, and it was beginning to soak through his shirt. He pushed up his sleeves, revealing the bands of black tattoos. Each tattoo represented one of the curse sigils he’d broken over the years, trophies on his skin. “We aren’t taking this gig, Tams.”

 

Realization stole over me. “Do you know what the Servant’s Prize is? It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”

 

His breathing grew more and more erratic. “I don’t know. I have no idea what the hell it is, but we aren’t getting mixed up with that sorceress again. There’s no way we can beat Dye to the prize with all the resources he has, it’s not a good idea, we can’t—we can’t—”

 

He turned his back to me, reaching out an arm to stop me from coming closer.

 

“What’s happening?” I asked him. “Are you okay?”

 

Cabell panted, his ribs expanding with each harsh breath as if trying to tear through his skin. Sweat dripped from his chin to the ground as his body vibrated with unspoken pain.

 

The seconds stretched out like years. A hum grew in my ears as I watched the tension seep through Cabell’s body, stiffening his shoulders. He fell forward, supporting himself against the rough stone wall.

 

Finally, he shook his head.

 

“You’re all right,” I told him, my voice calmer than I felt. “Just take a breath. Listen to the words I’m saying.” I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “In ages past, in a kingdom lost to time, a king named Arthur ruled man and the Fair Folk alike . . .”

 

“Tams—” he choked out. Panic trilled in me. Distracting him with a story was usually enough to avoid a shift, even when he was furious or upset. “Back . . . up . . .”

 

He was silenced by a loud crack as his bones shifted beneath his skin.

 

The movements were so forceful, they pulled and pushed at his shirt, tearing the fabric along his shoulders and rigid spine. He staggered, reaching blindly for me, for a wall, anything to support him.

 

A single, sharp thought tore through my shock. Not here.

 

This couldn’t happen here, with all these people around, singing and snapping selfies, blissfully unaware of the danger they were in.

 

I exploded into action, gripping his wrist and all but dragging him the last few blocks to the opening of the Vein in a closed-up convenience store. Moaning in pain, Cabell stumbled as his feet slid from his boots. I slowed, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and mine around his waist, then kicked the front door open, and we lurched into the waiting passage.

 

Darkness encircled us and the room blurred. Breath roared in my ears as his ribs contracted beneath my grip and shrank. The All Ways door crashed open against the wall, spitting us out onto the cold marble. The sound of clattering tools rippled through the atrium, drowning out even the sound of the voices from the library’s inner chamber.

 

“Was that the door?” I heard someone ask.

 

Cabell curled into a ball, his hands pressed to his changing face. Desperate, panting, I crawled back toward the All Ways door and shut it, my hands shaking so badly I almost couldn’t get the key back into the lock, let alone visualize our apartment.

 

The Vein opened with a sigh, and I stopped only long enough to remove the key.

 

Cabell was dead weight in my arms, muttering and senseless with pain, as we tumbled into the endless black of the passage and the door slammed shut behind us.

 

It was the apartment’s smell, sweetened by a neighbor’s laundry, that told me we’d arrived. Then we burst through the linen closet door, tumbling onto the threadbare rug. The whole building seemed to groan at the impact.

 

I scrambled onto my hands and knees, crawling back toward the closet and slamming its door shut once more so no one could follow.

 

“Cabell,” I said, my voice sounding distant to my ears. “What’s happening?”

 

“I don’t . . . ,” he said, fisting a hand in his hair. “Tams, I think—”

 

His face went terrifyingly slack, and I knew. I knew exactly what was coming the instant before his shoulders hunched, before the dark hair rippled out over his arms, before his bones began the work of reshaping themselves into something that wasn’t human.

 

“Take a deep breath,” I said. “Just focus—focus on my voice. You don’t have to go. You don’t. You control it, it doesn’t control you—”