Crowbones

CHAPTER 50

Watersday, Novembros 3

Stay,> she said when she returned to the spot where he waited.

She spoke in the way of someone learning to shape words, and he wondered if Elders spoke a different language or communicated with images—or if she was something so fierce and feral and old, even the other Elders didn’t speak to her unless need required it. He didn’t know. Didn’t even know how to ask the question. Not that it mattered. She understood what he tried to tell her, and that was enough.

After she slipped away to hunt, he looked at the lights shining from the windows of the main house. The Reader was there. Safe? Maybe. But there were other predators besides him out here in the dark.

He moved slowly, quietly, a shadow among the shadows. And he kept watch.