The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(40)

It was because he hadn’t given them a name, she decided. People needed names. Even the mule had a name. If she knew what to call him, he wouldn’t make her feel so uneasy.

“Broken Tongue,” she decided finally. “I will call you Broken Tongue. And you will not respond, because you won’t know I am talking to you.”

She glanced up at him from under her lashes, but he didn’t react. She said it again in Spanish, and he tilted his head but gave no indication of understanding or showing any desire to look her way again. Gabriel needed to teach her more sign language, because “friend,” “food,” and “danger” were useless here.

Gabriel shook his head, handing her the leaves she’d asked for, then set to scraping the dirt off the wild onions he’d dug up. “He’ll know. If he’ll respond or not, that’s another thing entire.” He used his smaller knife to slice the onions against a nearby rock, while Isobel shredded the leaves, lifting them to her nose to make sure they smelled right, then scattered the bits into the pan with the fish. They made a satisfying hiss against the heated metal.

Ree used to say, when you didn’t know what to do, clean dishes. Dirtying dishes worked almost as well. She studied the browning flesh, using a finger to test doneness.

“Just a bit more,” she said. “We’ve only the two plates, though.”

“The old man can use my plate,” Gabriel said. “I’ve eaten off worse than bark before.”

Isobel was going to say that the old man had likely eaten off worse as well, when she froze, her fingers lifting from the fish, still close enough to the flame that she could feel the heat against her skin.

“Iz?” Gabriel’s voice was hushed, not worried but questioning, while the old man set aside the strap of leather he had picked up again and waited, his hands resting on his knees. She swallowed, her tongue suddenly too large and her throat too dry.

The sigil in her palm flared once, prickly heat, matching the prickling on the back of her neck, and she knew without looking that the ring on her finger blackened further. Power gathered around them.

She didn’t want to look, not with her eyes, not with the awareness the sigil in her palm gave her. She wanted to pull the ground over her head and hide, but the ground wasn’t allowing her in, so she had no choice save to flee or look. And the burn of her palm wouldn’t accept flight, demanded she turn, stand, greet the presence that had joined them.

We dance to the devil’s tune, a whisper of memory reminded her, Marie’s eyes wise and sad. We don’t get to choose it.

Isobel stood, turned. There was still enough sunlight to see the shadow as it moved, although Isobel had a thought it might be visible under moonlight as well, or better. It would not be seen if she looked for it; lingering at the corner of her gaze, present more when it moved than when it remained still, the fluid tumble of water, the drifting swirl of steam. She knew it for the same thing she had sensed within the circle, the broken remnant of whatever had happened there.

And yet that thing had been drained, broken. This stirred with power, prickling the hair on Isobel’s arms and scalp; stripped of its substance but none of its danger. The fact that it had left the circle, was not constrained by it, left Isobel uneasy; she did not know what had been done there, did not know what the magicians had called into the circle or why they had left it here, if they had left it at all. . . .

She had been trained to read people, to tell what they needed, what they wanted, but there was nothing to read here. Nothing save the prickling sensation of power gathered, wound like husks around corn. Was this shadow the bait of the trap, or the one who had set it?

Isobel forced her panic down, lifting her left hand palm-up so that the sigil was visible, if their visitor could see it. “Here I am,” she said. “Did you call me?”

She heard the old man saying something and Gabriel’s hushed response, but it was as though they existed elsewhere, heard from a distance. She breathed in through her nose, then out through her mouth, feeling her weight shift in her boots, heels sinking against the ground. This time, she did not try to go deeper, did not risk rejection, but rather spread herself out, the roots of a cottonwood running just below the surface, knotted and strong.

The non-shape in front of her shifted, as though trying to avoid her touch, but never so far that it disappeared. Like a cat, she thought. Wanting food, fearing a kick.

“If you need aid, and it is in my power to aid you, tell me how,” Isobel said, her left arm steady as she held it out. “The Devil’s Hand is offered to you.”

Every child in the Territory knew the touch of a boneyard warding, the cool press of go-away-do-not-disturb that wrapped itself around the dead and kept them safe. It was a dry, smooth warning, without malice or fear. The thing that pressed against her now was none of those things, like nothing she had ever felt before. It sparked like tinder, hot and rough, and forced itself inside her, under her skin, and reached for her bones, scrabbling with a thousand tiny claws to take hold, to pull her inside out and consume her.

And yet she knew it for what it was: a haint, a ghost who had not been honored, not laid to proper rest.

For an instant, she was terrified. Her stomach contracted, pressing itself against her spine, even as her bowels threatened to loosen, fear and sorrow flooding her thoughts until there was nothing else.

Then the lines in her palm flared, red-hot, and she yelped, pain racing through the bones of her arm, shaking everything else out of its way, and she could breathe again, her thoughts and emotions her own. She panted, chest heaving, and tasted something hot and bitter on her tongue.