Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace, #1)(52)

“I’d admit that’s no surprise. Can anyone really know enough—about anything?”

I bite my lip. “What if I also told you I’m willing to add to your knowledge?”

His brows crinkle, and he darts a glance at the door. “Is this a trick?”

“It’s an offer. Believe it or not, I don’t wish to die. And since I can’t kill my amouré at the moment, I want to help you break my soul-bond with him.” I shut out the ingrained voice in me that says that’s an impossible task. Instead, I listen to Sabine’s voice: Don’t give up, Ailesse.

Marcel slides a hand in his pocket. A sign he’s getting more comfortable. “All right.” He drifts nearer, mulling over his sheet of parchment. “Can you tell me what an upside-down crescent moon means?”

“What does that have to do with the soul-bond?”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem—but maybe it’s the answer, too. I often find solving one mystery unlocks the next.”

That makes sense, and I suppose we need to start somewhere. “An upside-down crescent is a setting moon. But it can also represent a bridge.”

“A bridge . . .” Marcel scratches his jaw. “I hadn’t thought of that. And what if it’s touching another symbol?” He shows me his sheet of parchment, and my brows rise. It’s a drawing of the bone flute. I didn’t realize Marcel had a chance to study it before Jules broke it. “See here?” He points below the lowest tone hole on the flute to an inverted triangle that’s balanced on an upside-down crescent moon—right in the spot where the engraving was on the real instrument. “That triangle means water, right?”

I nod. “When the symbols are placed together like that it means the soul bridge.”

“Soul bridge?”

“The bridge the dead must cross to enter the Beyond.”

“Ah, where you Bone Criers do your ferrying.”

“Yes.” Bastien must have told Marcel what I told him.

“Not on Castelpont, obviously. No water in that riverbed.” He sits beside me and taps on the inverted triangle of his picture.

“The soul bridge is beneath the Nivous Sea.”

“Beneath the sea?”

My mother would disown me if she heard me now, revealing the mysteries of the Leurress. But then I remember she already gave me up. I have tried, Ailesse. This is the only way. My chest pangs, and I swallow against the tightness in my throat. “The soul bridge is a land bridge.” I pause, concentrating on the effort it takes to slide my legs off the slab to make more room for Marcel. He scoots closer. “It only emerges from the sea during the lowest tides.”

“So during the full moon and new moon?” he asks, once again impressing me with what he’s stored in his mind.

“Yes, but the Leurress can only ferry on a new moon.”

“Tonight?”

I nod. “That’s when the dead are lured to the soul bridge. The bone flute . . . it was used for more than luring amourés to bridges. It also lured the dead to cross the soul bridge.” I sigh. My mother must be beside herself with worry. If the dead aren’t summoned tonight, they’ll rise from their graves on their own and feed off the Light of the living. They’ll kill souls. Eternally.

“A soul bridge that’s a land bridge . . .” Marcel shakes his head. “Fascinating. Do you think that’s what this means?” He reaches into his pocket, and my heart nearly leaps out of my chest.

He’s holding the bone flute.

It’s whole. Intact.

He turns it over to show me a symbol, but my vision rocks with dizziness. “How did you . . . ?”

A flush of adrenaline seizes me. “That was broken. I watched Jules break it.”

Marcel chuckles. “Oh, she told me about that.” He bats a dismissing hand. “She was just trying to rattle you. What you saw her break was a random bone from the catacombs. The flute was in my pack the whole time.”

“What?” My mind reels as I think back on my first terrible day down here. I never really saw what Jules was holding—not in detail. She said it was the flute, and I believed her, but in the dim light of her oil lamp, I only made out that she was holding a slender bone.

I’ve been such a fool.

“So is this a symbol of the soul bridge, too?” Marcel points at the side of the flute without the tone holes. My mind finally clears enough to register it. This symbol has a horizontal line carved through the middle of the inverted triangle—the symbol of earth, not water.

“Um . . . yes,” I mumble, just to say something. I’ve never thought much about the small difference between the symbols, and it still seems unimportant. All I can picture is my mother’s amazed and grateful face when I set the flute in her hands. She’ll welcome me back. She’ll smile one of her rare smiles. She’ll touch my cheek and say, “Well done.”

A riptide of clarity flashes through me. I have to escape. Tonight. At midnight, the Leurress must ferry the dead, and my mother will need the bone flute.

“I had no idea there was a land bridge around here,” Marcel says, still caught up on that fact.

My gaze strays to his cloak, but it’s not parted wide enough for me to see if any knife glints within. “No one knows but my famille. It’s off a shore that’s hard to access.” I’m blurting now, telling him anything I can to keep him captivated. “The cliffs above the land bridge are impossible to descend unless you know where the hidden stairway is.” I shift to directly face him.