something, I realize it’s my fork.
“A single drop is all we need,” the Shepherd says. He sounds like he’s talking to me from down a long tunnel. His voice echoes.
I push the fork into the ball of my thumb. There’s a nice flush of red. It doesn’t remotely hurt. When I look up at the Shepherd, I can still see the circles and spirals, weaving over his suit and face.
They’re everywhere.
My hand is moving toward the book.
“You’re doing the right thing,” the ghost says.
My thumb is poised over the center of the design.
I’m about to press down.
There’s an explosion of noise, and I’m thrown sideways, landing hard on the floor. The rushing in my ears is gone. My thumb is fizzing with pain, blood running down onto the palm of my hand. Ham stands over me, barking and barking. The Shepherd looms above us.
“Restrain this beast, and seal the declaration of release,” he says.
“Sir.”
“Stay out of this!” the Shepherd yells, turning his head to look at someone else.
The Vassal is standing in the doorway of the kitchen.
“I can’t recommend you do this,” he says over Ham’s barks.
“I was going to release you,” I tell the Vassal, though I’m not sure anymore why it seemed like such a good idea.
“It’s for the best,” the Shepherd says.
“For you, perhaps,” replies the Vassal. “He has not wronged you. He is guilty of no crime.”
“You livestock,” spits the Shepherd, “you servile, mewling animal!”
“A Host is unable to harm its master,” the Vassal tells me. “It is at the heart of our bond. He may not kill you, but if you release him, you remove that deepest taboo, and he will stop your heart with a word.”
“Why?” I ask the Shepherd. “Don’t you want to be free?”
“Revenge,” the Vassal says. “He is consumed by it.”
The Shepherd kneels beside me and Ham. His glasses catch the light, two silver moons. Ham shrinks back but doesn’t run. I can see blue veins under the ghost’s skin. The wrinkles by his mouth shift as he speaks.
“You father defiled my tomb. In life I was the greatest necromancer the world has known. He bound me — bound me — and used me as
his Shepherd.
I do not forget. I do not forgive. I swore to rend his body and torment his soul, and, denied that small pleasure, I must turn to his heir.”
“I’ve done nothing to you.”
“Listen,” the Shepherd says. He removes his glasses. His eyes are black and wet, with no whites to them at all, black like the eyes of a goat or raven. “Listen to me, child. I have voyaged to the dark lands of the dead. I have seen things there that our words cannot describe. There can still be some small mercy for you, if you release me this very day.”
“I’m not scared of you.”
“You are a poor liar. Worse even than your father.”
The bottomless black eyes are a finger’s length from mine.
“This isn’t over,” he says. “This is the beginning.”
The Shepherd is gone.
“You could have warned me,” I say to the Vassal.
“I was afraid.”
“Of him?”
“He was the most terrible man in the world while he breathed, and he became worse for every day he spent beyond the veil. I fear him very much, sir.”
“Thanks for saving me,” I say. “You and Ham.”
“I know you did not ask for such a burden as we. The father is not the son.”
“So he can’t kill me?”
“He may not. Without explicit instruction, however, we may allow harm to come to you, and many of the Host would do so.”
“What will he do on Halloween?”
“I do not know, sir. The Shepherd has some stratagem, I am certain. He always does. Look to the Book of Eight.”
“I don’t know how! I can’t even open it.”
“And yet you must, sir. And yet you must.”
I look at the Book, now closed, sitting on our dining table as if it were any old book, nothing to take notice of. My stomach is churning. The Vassal has his head turned away from me, frowning, as if he’s listening to something
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