Ghostlight (The Reflected City Book 1) by Rabia Gale (i can read with my eyes shut TXT) 📗

woman, young or old, thin or plump, dark-haired or blonde or bald or grey: nothing. The person moved across the room, heading for the door. Arabella edged out of the way, or tried to. Somehow, in the maze of narrow paths that wound through tottering piles, she bumped into the other instead.

“I’m so sorry!” Her own exclamation rang in her ears. “I beg your pardon!”

Another blank.

“Oh, but I have people waiting for me outside.” The lie was so patently false, Arabella was sure it was written all over her face.

Another moment of nothingness, of words forgotten from a face now removed from her memory.

“Thank you for your concern,” she said again, holding out her hand. She received something from the mysterious person; she remembered the feel of it brushing across her fingers. There was a confusing tangle of bright lights and a feeling of dizziness, of the room distorting out of focus, wavering, then snapping back into detail and color.

Arabella was in a pawnshop, the owner smirking at her from behind the counter, saying something obsequious that she couldn’t quite make out until her ears popped.

There were only the two of them in the shop. There always had been from the moment she entered, the door handle slipping out of her grasp with a bang, the bell clanging in a tinny cacophony.

Arabella came to herself in a place so dark, it seemed like light had never touched it. She felt nothing around her, not solid ground under her feet nor a breath of air nor a shake of sound. Nothing to tell her if she was in a cellar or a music room or underwater or anything.

She could’ve been suspended over the maw of a kraken and never known it.

Arabella’s breath hitched. Her limbs thrashed, involuntarily, her aethereal body trying to find a way out of this darkness.

Bands snapped around her, searing her substance. Arabella may have screamed, but she couldn’t hear it above the sizzle and buzz of the runes. She was clenched into a ball of pain and she… couldn’t… breathe.

She struggled and the bands tightened even more. It wasn’t just the pain, it was the feeling of being held down, straitjacketed, bound. The feeling of being helpless while waiting for others to do things to you. Of not being able to run or fight or resist.

Stay calm! she told herself. Panicking only makes things worse.

She forced herself to hold still. Forced herself to take deep breaths, even though she was a ghost and didn’t need to. Forced herself to clear her mind. Forced herself to be as uncaring as air, as malleable as water, as solid as the earth.

The old tricks still worked. The fluttering feeling inside her, that of a wild bird beating against the bars of its cage, subsided. One by one, the bands loosened and slipped off. The agony of their searing became an ache, then a memory.

Cautiously, Arabella extended senses she had never wanted to use again. There was magic around her, and if she wanted to get out, she needed to use what little power, what meager experience she had.

She hung in a cylinder narrower than her arm span. The pentagram was small, much smaller than the one Trey had used. At least he’d given her space to walk in, and light, and his wards hadn’t hurt as much. Almost she missed it.

This pentagram, however, did not bode well for the intentions of the person who’d yanked her out of Merrimack’s and trapped her here.

She had no idea how much time had passed since she’d felt those painful hooks dragging her away from Trey. She remembered him springing for her, remembered telling him what she had dredged from her memory.

Her fingertips tingled where their hands had touched.

He was a Border Walker, a phantasmist, the Shade Hunter. He’d be able to track her. Wouldn’t he?

She just needed to be patient and not give in to panic.

And then she heard it.

A sound brushed the edge of her hearing, half-rasp, half-moan.

Prickles ran all over Arabella.

There was something prowling outside the pentagram. And it wasn’t at all friendly. A smell came to her—the chill of ice, the tang of blood, and the sweetish reek of death. The combination made her sick; she’d have retched if she weren’t a ghost who’d had nothing to eat in days.

Whatever was out there touched the wards. They hissed in a fountain of painful sparks. Arabella hugged herself, trying to make herself smaller, afraid to set them off again.

A voice, like the scrape of manacles against each other, said, “What a pretty morsel we caught. An uncorrupted spirit, fluttering, fluttering. Come here, pretty butterfly.”

It dripped hunger and promised pain. Arabella shivered and pressed her lips together.

“I hear you,” the voice continued. “I hear the pulse of your fear, like the racing heartbeat of a bird. A pretty little bird with bright eyes, whose neck I can snap with one hand.”

It laughed now, the noise like that of a stone lid dragging across a sarcophagus.

Arabella said, keeping her voice even, “Are you the ghoul that killed Mr. Gibbs?”

“Pshaw.” It made a wet, disgusted sound. “Such a small, shriveled, sooty soul that was. I am hungry for a better meal.”

Its yearning came at her in waves even through the barrier, raking across her being like claws of poison. Arabella felt nauseated, but she told herself that since she had no stomach, it didn’t matter.

The ghoul was ready to talk and Arabella was happy to let it. In spite of the way its voice scraped down her soul, this was her chance to get intelligence out of it.

“That couldn’t have been very pleasant,” she said sympathetically. “Why him and not someone more”—she searched for the right word—“tender?”

It hissed, its displeasure acid in Arabella’s incorporeal body. She winced. “I do what Master tells me to.”

“Oh, I see. Makes sense. We wouldn’t want anyone else to find out about the miasma at the Viewing.”

It laughed again. This time Arabella was forcefully