Winterveil by Jenna Burtenshaw

history can always find us in the veil,” she said to Kate. “Now is not the time for unfinished business.”
    â€œWhy can we see him?” asked Kate.
    â€œSouls have long memories,” said Dalliah. “Hate can feed their anger for a very long time.”
    â€œHe has no reason to hate me.”
    â€œHis hate is not drawing him here. Your hate is doing that,” said Dalliah. “This is what drives many of the Skilled into madness when the veil is weakened. Ordinary people see random souls, but the Skilled attract those whose deaths they have touched. At least you remember him.” Dalliah looked away and snapped the horse’s reins. “That is a good sign.”
    Kate noticed the sharpness in Dalliah’s voice. Kate had said too much, and she knew it.
    Kalen’s spirit voice echoed around the street. “ Ya won’t chase me off! ”
    Dalliah and Kate rode on, but Kalen kept moving. Kate saw his essence disappear from the living world and thought he was gone, until cold hands gripped her ankle and Kalen’s soul tried to sink beneath her skin.
    Kate screamed and kicked out. Her boot connected where Kalen’s face should have been, and he twisted away, lost in a burst of writhing mist.
    â€œUnwanted souls can be difficult to deal with,” said Dalliah, stirring the horses to a faster trot. “It takes a strong will to see them off. I am impressed.”
    Small clusters of people were crying, staring, holding on to their children, and trying to reassure each other that what they had seen could not possibly have been real. Just a few months ago Kate would have doubted her own eyes as well, but she saw the look of triumph on Dalliah’s face as they passed by. Somehow, this was all part of her plan. She wanted chaos. She wanted the people of Albion to be afraid.
    The streets surrounding the lake were in a part of Fume that was ill kempt and run down. The small district was a warren of alehouses and shops. The smell of straw and stale alcohol overwhelmed everything, and the people there had locked themselves in their homes and the alehouses to escape the commotion outside. These were the servants’ streets. Litter blew through the gutters, and tattered banners hung down from every gable, each cloth roughly painted with a blue eye. The horses shied as the banners snapped in the wind, and Dalliah told Kate to dismount. It would be easier to lead the beasts from now on.
    â€œI see people have not yet let go of their superstitions,” she said. “The dead are not interested in pointless pieces of cloth.”
    â€œIt’s a tradition,” said Kate, who had often hung banners in memory of her parents during the Night of Souls.
    â€œIt is a way for the living to calm their fears and believe they are still in control. The dead are not listening. Either they have moved on to the next life, or they are tormented by their own doubts, fears, and grief. They do not care how many candles are lit in their memory or how many whispers are shared in their name. The dead are lost. They cannot aid us any more than we can help them. It is foolish to believe otherwise.”
    The book hidden in Kate’s coat felt heavier the farther they walked. The pages trembled gently, as if an insect were thrumming its wings together beneath the fabric. She pressed her hand against it to make it stop and spotted movement in a window as she and Dalliah passed. She saw a figure in the glass, there and gone again in an instant, but there was something very familiar about it.
    â€œKeep moving,” said Dalliah.
    They left the horses and walked down a flight of shallow steps squeezed in between two leaning buildings whose rooftops almost touched above their heads. The effects of the veil were much weaker there. Kate could not see anything out of the ordinary, until the steps led down through a low stone arch and opened out onto the edge of one of Fume’s most