A Book of Spirits and Thieves

A Book of Spirits and Thieves by Morgan Rhodes Page A

Book: A Book of Spirits and Thieves by Morgan Rhodes Read Free Book Online
Authors: Morgan Rhodes
proved my point.”
    Slowly, she took a deep breath and regained an expression of steely resolve. “Okay, before I completely freak out, I need to make something crystal clear to you. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know I’m not dead. I’m not a ghost. I’ve been . . . zapped. By . . . magic or . . . something. I obviously don’t know exactly what happened. But the fact that you can see me, the fact that I found you again among all these people, leads me to believe that you’re the one who can help me.”
    Help her?
He couldn’t even help himself. “I assure you, I can’t help you.”
    “You
can
.” Becca reached for him, but her hand passed right through his arm. She clenched her hand into a fist, her expression turning pained. “If you’d just try!”
    “Listen to me, would you? I don’t need trouble. I have enough trouble as it is.”
    If that was so, then why did something inside him want to help her? She must be so scared, but she was hiding it well. The girl was brave.
    No,
not
a girl. A spirit.
    Maddox sighed. She was also a girl.
    A girl who was asking him to help her.
    Finally he sighed. “Try how? I don’t know what you think I can do for you.”
    “Before I first met you, I felt . . . weightless. I felt a terrifying nothingness. But when I’m anywhere near you, I feel something. It’s the same sort of shivery sensation I got when I touched the book. Something—I don’t know. Magical?” She tried to meet his gaze, but he looked away. “That book is the reason I’m here—I know it is.” She looked down at herself, then gave him a squeamish look. “Yes, I’m seriously going to freak out.”
    He grimaced. “I don’t know what that means, exactly, but don’t do it.”
    “Please,” she said, her voice now quavering. “Please, help me.”
    Curse it
, he swore inwardly. He did want to help her if he could.
    Suddenly, he thought of that first spirit he’d ever encountered, the horrible, dark creature that had reached for him in the night.
    What would have happened if he’d agreed to help it instead of hiding from it? If he’d opened his heart to something so clearly in pain, rather than cower in fear from it?
    Perhaps it had been every bit as frightened as he was.
    A terror-filled scream from somewhere nearby drew his attention away from the spirit girl.
    “Wait here,” he told Becca.
    A crowd had quickly gathered. Maddox now began to run toward the commotion to see what had caused it.
    “What’s going on?” he asked a woman at the edge of the crowd with two children at her feet, clutching her skirts.
    “A witch,” the woman told him. He peered over the shoulders of those in front of him to see that a young girl had been grabbed by a man wearing the uniform of Valoria’s private guard: brown leather tunic and trousers, red cape, and golden helmet. “She’s been accused of using her magic in an attempt to summon a storm to ruin the festival.”
    Maddox looked up at the cloudless blue sky. “There’s no storm.”
    The woman shrugged. “As I said, it was an attempt.”
    It was rumored that Valoria arrested and imprisoned witches with minor abilities in elemental magic, reasoning that the use of such spells made her own powers seem less incredible and fearsome to her subjects. Another rumor was that she didn’twant these witches to gather in large groups, pooling their magic in any attempt to usurp her throne.
    “So now what?” Maddox asked the woman. Despite his command that she stay behind, Becca had come to stand next to him.
    “There will be a public execution,” the woman said.
    “What?” Becca exclaimed. “They’re going to kill that girl just because someone accused her of being a witch? What is this, old Salem? You’re kidding me, right?”
    “It’s the way of this place,” he told her under his breath. How could she not know this?
    “The way?” she sputtered. “What backward, messed-up, whackadoodle place is this? That girl doesn’t

Similar Books

SHIVER

Tiffinie Helmer

Wonderland

Jennifer Hillier

Netlink

William H Keith

Just Annoying!

Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton