Latchkey by Nicole Kornher-Stace

Author:Nicole Kornher-Stace [Kornher-Stace, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781386416234
Publisher: Mythic Delirium Books
Published: 2018-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

From there they took a few more turnings, and then a few more, until Isabel was completely lost. She’d given up on the map. It was taking all her energy just to keep putting one foot in front of the other without dropping facefirst onto the floor. If it weren’t for Foster leading the way, she was sure she’d never be heard from again. She’d be bones in the dark for a future Archivist to trip over.

The ghost was carrying Sairy, though at least she was strong enough to protest it. Barely. Infection aside, the dizziness and nausea from constant contact with a ghost must have been intense.

“This is the fastest way to get you to the midwife,” Isabel called up to her. “Quit squirming. Be happy your feet are dry.”

And it was definitely fast. Isabel had to hustle and block out a great deal of pain to keep up.

There wasn’t a whole lot around to take her mind off of it, though. Constant dripping from the ceiling at this point, beading up in condensation on the walls. Muddy lakewater pooling in the gappy tile of the floor. She fell behind a little, then caught back up.

“That,” Sairy announced, pointing at a finger-wide runnel of gray water issuing steadily from the ceiling, “I do not like the look of. Is that not bothering anyone else?” When nobody replied, she turned her attention to the ghost. “Thanks,” she said grudgingly. “I didn’t mean for you to carry me like a—”

“No worries,” Foster said. “We’ve carried worse.”

But Sairy was on her feet now, Isabel noted. When had that happened? Still thrashed-looking, if not so bright with fever as she’d been…just a few minutes ago.

This scared Isabel maybe even more than the leaky ceiling. More than once she’d seen wounded upstarts whose systems had rallied just hours, or minutes, before shutting down for good.

“Sairy,” she said, coming level with her. Trying to keep the alarm from her voice. “Hey. Let me check on your—”

Isabel glanced down at Sairy’s hand and blinked, then exhaled hard, realizing what she was seeing.

The bandage was gone. The wound was gone.

Behind her, the ghost’s silence was thick enough to cut.

Isabel opened her mouth, then closed it.

She fell back to walk beside the ghost.

“You’re impossible,” Isabel told him.

“You’re welcome,” he replied.

All at once Isabel could feel something unseen between them click invisibly back into place, like a couple of rusty gears grating against each other until, improbably, they meshed. On they walked in silence, shoulder to shoulder, two old friends in the dark among the sunken bones of a dead world.

Sairy, meanwhile, was practically bouncing on her toes with nerves.

“I was supposed to be helping in the fight this whole time,” she was explaining to Foster. “I can’t wait to get up there. Going to find Lissa and Meg and unleash holy hell.”

“Just a little farther,” Foster was saying. She glanced over her shoulder at the ghost and Isabel. “When we get to the hatch, you two can clear a space and relocate the townspeople.

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