Library of Souls Read Online Free PDF

foppish wave of hair from his eyes—“I do this all the time, sweetheart”—then saw us and froze, his eyebrows parabolic. The door they’d come through banged closed behind them.
    â€œHey,” I said casually, as if we weren’t crouched on the floor with a dying man, covered in blood. “What’s up?”
    Don’t freak out. Don’t give us away
.
    The boy wrinkled his brow. “Are you …?”
    â€œIn costume,” I replied. “Got carried away with the fake blood.”
    â€œOh,” said the boy, clearly not believing me.
    The girl stared at the folding man. “Is he …?”
    â€œDrunk,” said Emma. “Soused out of his brain. Which is how he came to spill all our fake blood on the floor. And himself.”
    â€œAnd us,” said Addison. The teens’ heads snapped toward him, their eyes going wider still.
    â€œYou goon,” Emma muttered. “Keep quiet.”
    The boy raised a trembling hand and pointed at the dog. “Did he just …?”
    Addison had said only two words. We might’ve played it off as a trick of echoes, something other than what it seemed, but he was too proud to play dumb.
    â€œOf course I didn’t,” he said, raising his nose in the air. “Dogs can’t speak English. Nor any human language—save, in one notable exception, Luxembourgish, which is only comprehensible to bankersand Luxembourgers, and therefore hardly of any use at all. No, you’ve eaten something disagreeable and are having a nightmare, that’s all. Now, if you wouldn’t mind terribly, my friends need to borrow your clothes. Please disrobe at once.”
    Pallid and shaking, the boy started to remove his leather jacket, but he’d only wriggled one arm free when his knees gave out and he fainted to the floor. And then the girl began to scream, and she didn’t stop.
    In an instant the wight was banging at the chained door, his blank eyes flashing murder.
    â€œSo much for sneaking away,” I said.
    Addison turned to look at him. “Definitely a wight,” he said, nodding sagely.
    â€œI’m so glad we put that mystery to rest,” said Emma.
    There was a jolt and a squeal of brakes. We were coming into a station. I pulled Emma to her feet and prepared to run.
    â€œWhat about Sergei?” Emma said, whipping around to look back at him.
    It would be hard enough to outrun a pair of wights with Emma still recovering her strength; with the folding man in my arms, it would be impossible.
    â€œWe’ll have to leave him,” I said. “He’ll be found and brought to a doctor. It’s his best chance—and ours.”
    Surprisingly, she agreed. “I think it’s what he’d want.” She went quickly to his side. “Sorry we can’t take you with us. But I’m certain we’ll meet again.”
    â€œIn the next world,” he croaked, his eyes slitting open. “In Abaton.”
    With those mysterious words and the girl’s screams ringing in our ears, the train came to a stop and the doors opened.
    * * *
    We weren’t clever. We weren’t graceful. The moment the train doors slid open, we just ran as fast as we could.
    The wight leapt out of his car and into ours, by which time we had dashed past the screaming girl, over the fainted boy, and onto the platform, where we struggled against a crowd that was streaming onto the train like a school of spawning fish. This station, unlike all the others, was heaving at the seams.
    â€œThere!” I shouted, pulling Emma toward a WAY OUT sign that glowed in the distance. I hoped Addison was somewhere at our feet, but so many people were flooding around us that I could hardly see the floor. Luckily, Emma’s strength was returning—or a rush of adrenaline was kicking in—because I don’t think I could’ve supported her weight and threaded the human stampede,