Spirit by Shauna Granger Page B

lank over his forehead where his hat had pressed it down.
He sniffed again while I watched him. When he realized I stood there, he
quickly wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket and cleared his throat.
    “Sorry,”
I said, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
    He
had a thick Irish accent that swallowed some of the words he spoke. “No, no, s’all
right.”
    “Do
you mind?” I asked, gesturing to the ground in front of him.
    “Oh,
yeah, sure.” His feet scraped the ground as he adjusted himself to sit up
straight. I crossed my ankles and dropped to the ground to sit cross-legged in
front of him. “Kind of nice to see another human around here.”
    “Kind
of, not that either of us wants to be here at all,” I replied, making his mouth
twitch in an almost smile.
    “True.”
He nodded.
    “Shayna,”
I said, holding my hand out for him.
    “Jacob,”
he replied, taking my hand in his and shaking it briefly. We sat there in
awkward silence for a few moments, listening to the noise of the camp around
us, smelling boiling soups and roasting meats.
    “So,”
I finally broke the silence, “you know where you are?”
    “Seems
the Slaugh got me, didn’t they?” His accent hit Slaugh harder than even Gwyn’s did, drawing the word out to sound
like it should: Sloo-ah.
    “Seems
so,” I agreed. “Why though? If you don’t mind me asking.”
    “Me
sister-in-law, the dirty-” He bit off the sentence, swallowing the insult that
surely pressed against the back of his teeth.
    “She
called them down on you?” I felt an uncomfortable fluttering in my chest.
    “Suppose
she did,” he said with a nod.
    “I
didn’t know people still did that. I mean, that people still believed,” I said,
tilting my head to the side.
    “Most
don’t,” he said. “But the stories are still told. Me grandmother, she used to
tell us all the stories of the old faiths.”
    “Mine
too,” I said, making him look up at me.
    “You’re
American though?”
    “My
grandmother was first generation. Her parents were from Ireland, so she knew
all of the stories,” I explained. “Scared the crap out of me, and obviously the
stories are true.”
    He
laughed. “So they are, so they are.”
    “Why
did your sister-in-law do this to you?”
    “Ye
mean, what did I do?” he corrected me. I just stared at him; we both knew what
I was asking. He waited before he answered, whether to control his anger or if
he was deciding to answer me at all, I wasn’t sure.
    “It’s
fine.” I put my hands up in front of me, suddenly feeling very awkward. “I shouldn’t
have asked; it was rude of me. You don’t even know me.”
    “No,
no,” he said, a note of resignation in his voice. “I mean, what’s it matter
now, right? I’m here; there’s no going back now.” I bit my tongue then. He’d
been hunted and caught, so according to Gwyn, there was no going back for him,
but it didn’t seem fair to tell him I might still have a chance of getting out
of here.
    “My
brother was in a car accident,” he began slowly, dropping his eyes to stare at
his hands. “We’d been at the pub most of the night, had one too many. He’d been
having troubles with his wife and he needed a night out, you know? He just
needed some space to calm down.” He paused then, taking a breath and holding it
for a long time before exhaling loudly.
    “The
whole damn time his wife was calling his cell, over and over, texting him when
he wouldn’t answer. She even called the pub to have the bartender look for him.”
He shook his head then, and I saw the muscle in his jaw jumping as he ground
his teeth. “Anyway, eventually we knew he’d avoided her long enough and had to
get home. Neither of us was in any condition to drive, him more so than me. I
tried to take the keys from him, I swear it; we even fought over them.” He held
up his bloody knuckles as proof of his story. “But in the end, he got the best
of me and got into the car.”
    He
paused again, color rushing to