Library of Souls Read Free Page A

often do when I’m out of ideas—I looked to Emma. I could read in the desperation on her face that she understood the hopelessness of our situation and in the stony set of her jaw that she meant to act anyway. I remembered only as she began to stagger forward, palms out, that she couldn’t see the hollow, and I tried to tell her, reach for her, stop her, but I couldn’t get the words out and couldn’t grab her without dropping the folding man, and then Addison was alongside her, barking at the wight while Emma tried uselessly to make a flame—spark, spark, nothing, like a lighter low on juice.
    The wight broke out laughing, pulled back the hammer of his gun, and aimed it at her. The hollowgast ran at me, howling in counterpoint to the squeal of train brakes behind me. That’s when I knew the end had come and there was nothing I could do to stop it. At that moment something inside me relaxed, and as it did, the pain I felt whenever a hollow was near faded, too. That pain was like a high-pitched whine, and as it hushed, I discovered hidden beneath it another sound, a murmur at the edge of consciousness.
    A word
.
    I dove for it. Wrapped both arms around it. Wound up and shouted it with all the force of a major league pitcher.
Him
, I said, in a language not my own. It was only one syllable but held volumes of meaning, and the moment it rattled from my throat, the result was instant. The hollow stopped running at me—stopped dead, skidding on its feet—then turned sharply to one side and lashed out a tongue that whipped across the platform and wrapped three times around the wight’s leg. Knocked off balance, he fired a shot that caromed offthe ceiling, and then he was flipped upside down and hauled thrashing and screaming into the air.
    It took my friends a moment to realize what had happened. While they stood gaping and the other wight shouted into his walkie-talkie, I heard train doors whoosh open behind me.
    Here was our moment.
    â€œCOME ON!” I shouted, and they did, Emma stumble-running and Addison tangling her feet and me trying to wedge the gangly and blood-slick folding man through the narrow doors until we all crashed together across the threshold into the train car.
    More gunshots rang out, the wight firing blindly at the hollow.
    The doors closed halfway, then popped back open. “Clear the doors, please,” came a cheerful prerecorded announcement.
    â€œHis feet!” Emma said, pointing at the shoes at the end of the folding man’s long legs, the toes of which were poking through the doors. I scrambled to kick his feet clear, and in the interminable seconds before the doors closed again, the dangling wight fired more wild shots until the hollow grew tired of him and flung him against the wall, where he slid to the floor in an unmoving heap.
    The other wight scurried for the exit.
Him, too
, I tried to say, but it was too little too late. The doors were closing, and with an awkward jolt the train began to move.
    I looked around, grateful that the car we’d tumbled into was empty. What would regular people make of us?
    â€œAre you okay?” I asked Emma. She was sitting up, breathing hard, studying me intensely.
    â€œThanks to you,” she said. “Did you really make the hollow do all that?”
    â€œI think so,” I said, not quite believing it myself.
    â€œThat’s amazing,” she said quietly. I couldn’t tell if she was frightened or impressed, or both.
    â€œWe owe you our lives,” said Addison, nuzzling his head sweetly against my arm. “You’re a very special boy.”
    The folding man laughed, and I looked down to see him grinning at me through a mask of pain. “You see?” he said. “I told you. Is miracle.” Then his face turned serious. He grabbed my hand and pressed a small square of paper into it. A photograph. “My wife, my child,” he said. “Taken by our enemy long ago.