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“Hiding from the Guardians?”
She gave the tiniest nod.
“Just make sure Joey’s okay for me, all right?”
Wendy made the tiniest pfft sound but she nodded again.
Others had begun to stir. He wondered how many would not, how many would join the empty. They weren’t human, so he wondered where the Guardians would put them.
“There.” Argent nodded to a barn at the market’s edge.
“What is it?” Adam asked. “I can’t see anything.”
“Me either, but I smell death.”
They inched closer.
She lifted her hand, readying a spell. Adam gripped his sword and was beyond glad to have it back.
Argent gestured and the barndoor rolled open.
The interior remained dark, cast in night as the market was, but Adam could see enough to make out Betty and Bill. They lay in a heap with their fellow ogres, all dead, their purple tinged with green. The smell of offal and blood was terrible.
“What happened to them?”
“Poison,” Argent stepped near enough to prod a body with the toe of her shoe. “Manticore, if I had to guess. Ogres are communal creatures. They’re rarely alone. Contaminate their food and they’d likely all be struck at once.”
She flicked a finger skyward and sent a little pulse of white light into the air, signaling the other elves.
They came quickly, and as much as the earlier violence had thrilled some of them, this had the opposite effect.
“You can put your sword away.”
It took Adam a breath to realize that Argent was speaking to him.
He released the hilt and the blade settled onto his back. He had to admit the weight was a comfort, even against the fresh ache of the newly healed wound.
“Who would do this?” he asked.
“Whoever wanted to unleash the banshees on the market. What I don’t understand is how they managed it.”
“I have an idea,” Adam said quietly.
“What is it?”
“I’ve been focused on the wrong thing. It’s not about the souls. It’s about the bodies. The empty ones, the people the banshees take the spirits from. The banshees are crossing over through them. Whoever is doing this is using the empty people as weapons.”
Adam told her about the man in the gray suit and how he’d died, unleashing the banshee. He relayed what Joey and Wendy had told him about the bottles.
“Your working theory is that someone is stealing souls and creating these empty people, so the banshees can incubate inside them?”
“Yes. I don’t know how they’re bringing the banshees over, but I saw a lot of them in the Between. They swarmed me when I spirit walked there. They’re waiting for their chance to cross over.”
Argent surveyed the market. “If you are right, then their goal here wasn’t simply chaos. It was to make themselves more of these empty people. It’s ruthlessly efficient. The carnage hides the intent.”
“Oh shit. The hospital. Cole and the others from the concert.”
Argent’s eyes narrowed.
