Eight Rivers of Shadow by Leo Hunt

Author:Leo Hunt [Hunt, Leo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9217-9
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2016-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

We make as clean a getaway as we can under the circumstances. I help Ash load the mirror, demon freshly trapped within it, into the back of her car. Ash looks awful. There are blue traceries of veins in her neck and face that weren’t visible before, like her skin’s made of paper. I can see wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. It’s like looking at an old woman’s face surfacing from under a teenage girl’s skin. She’s covered in mud and soaked with water, her overcoat clearly unsalvageable. Her white boots are now black.

“What about Mr. Hallow?” Elza’s asking us. There are red marks on her neck where he was crushing it.

“The Widow can deal with him,” Ash says, covering the mirror with cloth again.

I go back into the entrance hall of the school. The Widow is kneeling beside Mr. Hallow, holding the chalice of Lethe water. She’s got one hand supporting his head, and the other is tilting the cup, making him drink. He doesn’t seem to be awake.

The Widow sees me watching her.

“Were there others?” she asks me.

“What?”

“Others the demon used as a vessel?”

“Alice Waltham,” I say. “Blond girl, red jacket. She was lying in the hallway by the main yard. I don’t know where she is now. Nurse’s office? She’s got cuts and stuff.” I make a gesture in the direction of the back part of the school. The Widow nods.

“She will forget,” the ghost says. She lays Mr. Hallow’s head back down on the tiles gently. “I will attend to her now.”

“Luke!” Elza shouts behind me.

“What?”

“Get in! The police are coming, remember? We have to leave!”

Ash’s car is parked right outside the ruined doors, engine idling. We’re lucky it still works at all. Turning away from the Widow, I rush out into the parking lot and get in by the passenger-side door.

As soon as I close the door, Ash guns the engine and we speed away, narrowly missing a street lamp. It’s only now, sitting down, that I realize how fast my heart is going. My throat is dry, my spine bubbling like fresh-popped champagne. Ash heads toward the Pilgrim Grove development.

“What happened to you?” I’m asking Ash.

“Ilana had a moment, I guess,” she says flatly. “It was bad timing. Sorry.”

“We can talk about that later,” I say.

“I woke up under a tree, and there was that gross boy with the shaved head. Kurt? He spent about five minutes telling me you’d gone chasing after Alice down to the school, and she was ‘smiling all crazy’ and that you were both magic. I knew more or less where to go. He won’t remember any of what happened, so don’t worry.”

“Where’s Ilana now?” I ask.

“Asleep,” Ash says. Her face looks really bad; the irises of her eyes are almost transparent.

“Hello,” Elza says. “I’d like an ambulance, please.”

Me and Ash whirl around to look at her.

“What are you —”

“Elza?”

She puts one hand over the speaker of her phone.

“There are two people back there in terrible condition,” Elza hisses at us.

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