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

Arabella reached down for it, pushing through air that was surprisingly dense. It resisted, pushing back. Arabella lost her balance, spun, brushed close to the wards.

They hissed and spat, cat-like.

Arabella kept her arms tight by her side. For several moments, she didn’t move at all, though she felt the light consuming her substance.

Could a soul really go up in a flare like this? She wished she’d paid better attention in church. Her theological education was woefully meager.

Right. One more try at this, I think. Arabella lifted her right hand and concentrated her substance into it. It solidified, but her clothes had frayed to wisps and the ends of her hair to mist.

Arabella dove.

She swam like a fish in water, arms to her side, kicking with her legs. Her initial rush got her close to the tangle, reaching out with her more solid hand, before the spell began to push her away.

She gritted her teeth, eyes fixed on that ring.

Please, God-Father and Risen Lord! I need that! She stretched, her arm extending impossibly long. She felt ghostly bones detach and ghostly muscles elongate. Her shoulder softened, her elbow disappeared.

And still her fingers, glowing strongly, reached.

Reached through the pentagram’s tangle. Brushed past spines and bristles and thorns that scratched and pierced but could not stop. Grasped the ring, cold and hard and shiny.

Yes! I’m glad I practiced being a pokey. Arabella reeled in her substance, like a fisherman with a line.

The ring lifted out of the spell.

And the spell went insane.

The curved bones and sharp spines shuddered. Rope and hair whipped. The walls of the cylinder sizzled.

The air around Arabella boiled and buffeted, burned and stung. She would’ve screamed, if it hadn’t felt like her mouth was scalded, her eyes scorched away.

All she could feel was the ring in her fingers and the Shadow Lands, cool at her back.

She didn’t even pause to think. As the spell collapsed around her in screeching fury, Arabella turned and plunged into the Shadow Lands.

Arabella landed with a thump, the impact reverberating all through her substance. The solidity was so unexpected, she gasped.

It was as if she had bones again. And flesh and—Arabella unclenched her hand.

Her mother’s ring was small and solid on her palm. Still shaking from her ordeal, Arabella slid it onto her finger. It settled in place, the star in the heart of the sapphire winking. It was a friendly glimmer, and for a moment her mother’s scent of kitchen herbs and stillroom potions surrounded Arabella, giving her courage.

Thank you, Mama.

Arabella didn’t wonder long about how she’d brought the material ring into the Shadow Lands, nor how it was able to fit onto her spirit hand. Trey, she was sure, had a prosy book somewhere with several possible explanations. In the meantime, she’d accept this as a gift from the God-Father, and vow to never let herself be so foolishly parted from her mother’s memento again.

Arabella scrambled to her feet, looked around, and stared.

She had expected an entirely different place from this, a place thick with gloom or fog, seething with demons and the unquiet dead. She had braced herself to run—or fight.

Instead, Arabella found herself by the side of a quiet lake. The light was pale gold, thin and without warmth, emanating from a sky the color of old honey. She could make out no sun. The ground underfoot was covered in dry brown grass, frosted over. It crunched under her feet, and cold seeped through the soles of her kid slippers.

She was back in her spotted morning dress, a rather incongruous choice for her current location.

Stunted trees with bone-white limbs, like skeletons of themselves, dotted the landscape. Strings of beads, ropes of shells, slips of paper, and more hung from the leafless branches. They tinkled and clicked, sighed and murmured, in a small breath of wind. Arabella caught words in the stirring air and decided not to walk among the trees. She didn’t want to be caught and tangled in the thoughts of others like she had at Merrimack’s.

She thought it would be rather worse here.

Instead, Arabella turned towards the lake. It glimmered grey and silver, with odd, heaving ropes of color here and there.

A man stood on the bank, dressed in baggy trousers, shapeless coat, and rumpled cap. He was fishing, his back towards her.

The entire scene went suddenly very still. Arabella stood poised, unsure whether to flee.

A distant cry, mournful and moving, broke the silence. Arabella glanced up at the sky as a bird arrowed across it, dark against the dulled bronze.

It might be a duck, except it was angled instead of curved, as if made out of knife-cuts.

The fisherman paid neither her nor the bird any heed. Beyond him, in the distance, was an edifice, the color of burnt caramel. It was sticky-looking, as if it had been molded rather than built.

Something tugged her in that direction. She didn’t know if she would find her body or Trey there, but either possibility was preferable to staying here. She had no idea how time flowed in the Shadow Lands, how much of the night in Vaeland had already past.

Her exorcism was set for Saturday morning. She had to be back in her body before them.

Arabella hurried towards the structure, her footprints dark in the grass. She hesitated as she passed the fisherman, then shook her head. Why borrow trouble in these strange realms? Her experiences with the dead hadn’t been pleasant so far.

She made to go on, lifting a foot.

The man said, without turning, “Did you leave behind a true love, miss?”

A thrill ran through Arabella. For a wild moment, Trey Shield’s face flashed through her mind. Ruthlessly she quashed the thought. She was no romantic ninny to fall in love with her rescuer.

“No,” she said firmly, both to herself and the fisherman.

“Pity,” he answered. Muscles bunched under his jacket as he jerked his line out of the water. Something narrow and silver thrashed at the end of it.

Intrigued, Arabella