Keeper of Crows (Keeper of Crows #1)(28)

11





I didn’t remember falling asleep or moving to the bed. It was as if I sat on the couch and suddenly wasn’t there anymore, like I ceased to be. Only I awoke in Purgatory again, surrounded by gray and the telltale sounds of crows on the roof above the room in which I lay. Keeper must have helped me to the bedroom. The mattress was soft enough, although sunken in places. The pillows smelled like mildew, but they were better than nothing, and sleeping on the couch near the Lesson puddle wasn’t gonna happen.

Stretching, I sat up and looked out the window, watching the manna rain down from the heavens. This afternoon, when the cleansing rain poured from the sky, I was going to get clean. Padding to the door and down the steps, I found Keeper on the deck again, gathering the soft pillows of nourishment.

“I didn’t think you were ever going to wake up,” he said, raking his chocolate brown eyes over me.

“Awww, that’s so sweet of you to be concerned,” I teased with a grin.

He shook his head. “No, I tried to wake you several times and couldn’t. It was as if you were gone.”

A shiver ran up my spine, the hairs on my neck standing at attention.

“What’s that?” I looked to the sky.

He stood and shielded his eyes. “I see nothing.”

I plucked a piece of manna off the railing of the deck and popped it in my mouth, letting it disintegrate.

“Wait, you felt that?” he asked.

“What?” I said around another piece. “What did I feel?” My eyes searched the yard for more Lessons. Would those bastards attack again?

Just then, a crow returned through the veil and flew straight to Keeper, perching on his outstretched finger. “Thank you,” he said softly.

“Why are you thanking him? What did he do?”

Keeper cooed at his bird. “He delivered a message for me, and also returned a message to me.” I watched the two stare at each other, Keeper stroking the oily feathers of the fowl as if it were a pet.

“What message?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

“We will find out more this evening. Help will arrive then.”

“This evening?”

“Yes,” he said. “Until then, we stay put.”

“What about the Lessons? Will they attack again?”

“They didn’t overnight,” he retorted.

“But they did yesterday, in a very coordinated way, which you said they hadn’t done before, so how do we know they won’t?”

Keeper smiled. “We have faith, and we stay here.”

“Why should I trust you?” I asked, hand on my hip.

He snorted. “Whom else will you trust? A Lesson? Another merchant? You can trust them all the way to your demise.”

“Why do the merchants want souls?”

“They sell them into slavery in exchange for favors or women. It’s disgusting and the trade is thriving, despite my efforts to stop them. And it’s not just souls dragged across the divide; now they’re taking souls from the city. Nowhere is safe, and nothing is sacred,” he explained, looking at the silhouette of the towering buildings in the distance.

“Was it ever safe?”

“It’s been a long time since Purgatory was used for its purpose; a city to house those who needed rest, with the outskirts left to the Lessons and the walls to separate the two. Merchants are nothing but parasites looking to make a deal.”

“You said they would trade souls for favors. What kind of favors?” My stomach churned as I wondered what Gus and Chester would have traded me and Pamela for.

Keeper smiled. “Favors are important here, as important as money is on Earth. For instance, they will give a soul to a gatekeeper in exchange for the gates to open for them another time—a more convenient time.”

“What do the gatekeepers use the souls for?”

“They sell them to the Meat district.”

My eyes bulged. “They eat them?”

“No!” he laughed. “Souls can’t be consumed. The Meat district is much like the red light districts of Earth. It is a portion of the city where souls are forced into slavery, sometimes sexual in nature, but sometimes it is simply servitude.”

I remembered Gus and Chester and the ‘reddies’ they mentioned, and my stomach churned. “That’s awful. I thought sex trafficking was only an earthly issue.”

He sighed. “I wish.”

“You can’t stop them?”

“I try, but I can’t be everywhere at once, and my orders have changed. I guard the fissures and try to stop new souls from being brought across the divide; however, I can’t stop them from kidnapping souls from within the city itself while I’m out here guarding the fissures.”

“Which is the bigger problem? Souls being stolen from Purgatory or souls from Earth?”

“Earth, because those souls often aren’t supposed to come here. That’s why I have orders to protect them. Besides, many souls kidnapped from Purgatory have already lost themselves. They won’t return to their bodies. They’re mindless and easy to capture. But the merchants covet fresh souls from Earth. They’re worth much more, because there’s still fight left in them.”

Someone felt the souls taken from within the city weren’t worth protecting, but even if they lost their minds, they didn’t deserve to be slaves.