Fated (The Soul Seekers #1)(97)
There’s even a house made of bones—a large, rambling, dull white palace with knobs and joints on the corners, teeth decorating the windows and doors. And the fence that surrounds it is made of bones too, mostly femurs and spines, with the occasional elbow thrown in.
And that’s when I see that what I first took for trees aren’t trees at all—or at least not living trees. No longer sprouting leaves, no longer providing oxygen or shade, no longer functioning in the usual way. They died long ago, their scorched and bony carcasses are all that remain.
The woman spreads her arms wide and gazes up at the sky. The move causing the sky to darken into a glittering canopy of black velvet, as her face transforms into a skull, her skirt becomes a whirl of snapping, writhing snakes that circle her legs and waist, and her eyes turn into horrible empty sockets that level on me. Her jaw yawning wide, emitting a horrible bone-on-bone scraping sound, as she throws her head back and feeds on a long line of stars that funnel into her mouth.
The sight leaving no doubt in my mind that Dace has brought me to the Bone Keeper’s house.
fifty-one
“You can’t have him.” I glare, as Dace finds my hand. The press of his fingers warning that this is not the best way to proceed, though it’s not like that stops me. “You can have all the others. I don’t care what you do with them—but this one is mine.”
“None of them are yours!” She shrieks, eye sockets glowering, skirt thrashing and slithering. “How dare you even consider it! Don’t you know who I am?”
I nod. Not only do I know, but the Richter we’re fighting over finally guessed too, judging by the way he snarls and yelps and fights like hell to free himself. But it’s no use. With a single flick of her wrist, a knot of snakes swarm him, binding his throat, his arms, his legs—holding him captive like the vines once did.
“Then you know those bones belong to me. All the bones belong to me. And these particular bones have been denied me for too many years.” She glowers at the undead Richter beside her. “Today is Día de los Muertos—the day when the dead bring me their bones. It is not a courtesy. It is not an offering to appease me. It is the price one pays for their final admittance into the afterlife. This family of Coyotes has eluded me for centuries, but no more. Their bones will be mine, and since you found your way here, yours are mine too.”
Dace tightens his hold, but I’m too stunned by her words to edit myself. “You can’t take my bones!” I cry. “I’m not even dead!” Dace moves to hush me, subdue me, but it’s no use. I came here to get Paloma’s soul, and there’s no way I’ll let myself fail.
The Bone Keeper stares, weighing my words as her fingers pick at her hissing, slithering, twist of a snake skirt. “That’s easy enough to remedy,” she decides, her shiny black boots gliding across the dirt until she stands just before me. Her skin so translucent it looks like a sheen of wax paper has been pulled over her thin, bony frame—her skull of a face glistening as a result of all the stars she just ate.
Her fingers reaching for me, ready to join me with the undead Richter beside her, when Dace steps between us and says, “We’re not interested in bones. The only ones we want to keep are our own. We’re here for another reason entirely—it’s my understanding you’ve been known to work with the Light Workers from time to time—helping them retrieve stolen souls. This one here—” He motions toward the freak held hostage by the snakes. “He’s stolen a soul we desperately need. If you’ll help us retrieve it, we’ll leave the bones to you.”
Her skirt of squirming snakes shoots around Dace to lash at my legs, their flickering tongues finding all the spots where my jeans have ripped, stinging and lashing my skin as she says, “I don’t make deals.”
Her eye sockets darken in dismissal, as though that’s the end of it. But we didn’t come all this way to give up so easily. I swipe hard at the snakes, watching as they dart back to the protective bed of her hips, as I stand beside Dace and say, “I need that soul, and I need it now. A good woman is dying, and I can’t let that happen. And while you may not care about that, you might care to know that these undead soul stealers and the sorcerer who made them, have terrible plans for this place. They’re going to destroy the Lowerworld as you know it, and all the other worlds too. But you can help stop it. If you’ll just return this soul to me, then—”
“I don’t care about their plans!” she cries, her voice as outraged as her skull face. “It’s bones I’m interested in. Every time Coyote invades the Lowerworld, it results in millions of deaths in the Middleworld—a bounty for me!”
“But you’ll get those bones eventually!” I practically spit in frustration. “Don’t you get it? By not even trying to fight this, you’re letting them win at their game. You claim to hate them for eluding you all these years—and yet you’re helping them go through with their plans! It just doesn’t make any sense.”
While she doesn’t instantly cave like I’d hoped, it’s clear my words have had an impact. She grows quiet, pensive, making no further move either toward me or away from me. Her face transforming, returning to the beauty she was when we first came upon her, though the snake skirt remains. She turns to me and says, “Paloma is on my list.”