Read Starling for Free Online Page A

shook his head.
    “But you just said they would. You said—”
    “I said I thought it would be safer if we waited.” Fennrys ran a hand through the dark blond hair that stood up in tousled spikes from his head. He looked both very young and immeasurably old in that moment.
    “And?”
    “And it will.” Fennrys offered Toby a weary grin. “Things always appear different with the coming of the light, Mr. Fortier. Sometimes darkness is better, but I don’t think that’s the case here.”
    Mason was a little surprised that Toby didn’t just grab this guy by the front of his borrowed sweatshirt and shake him until some answers fell out. But he didn’t. He just stood there.
    And Fennrys stood facing him.
    It was like some kind of super-tense Mexican standoff, except neither of them had a weapon pointed at the other. Mason held her breath. Just then, something seemed to spark in Fennrys’s gaze—a thought, or maybe a memory—and his hand drifted slowly toward the iron medallion at his throat, as though pulled upward by an invisible puppet string.
    “I think we could all use some rest, Toby,” Fennrys said after a moment, and there was a quality to his voice that was … strange. Almost hollow, like an echo. “Don’t you?”
    Mason shook her head. There was a sudden, subtle pressure in her ears, like she was on an airplane taking off and needed to pop them. She looked back at Fennrys and realized with a start that his eyes were now fixed on her. She felt her breath stop in her throat.
    “We could all use some rest,” Fennrys said again. “Couldn’t we?”
    Mason felt a strange tingling near the base of her skull. Fennrys’s words echoed even more strangely. Mason heard Toby yawn. He mumbled an agreement, and she heard him start to head in her direction, his footsteps heavy and shuffling. Mason turned and stumbled back to where the others huddled in the darkness. Her eyes were so heavy by the time she got there that she was almost asleep on her feet. Heather and Rory were already out—Heather was snoring softly and Rory’s head was tipped back, his mouth wide-open. Mason sank to the floor beside Calum’s outstretched form, dimly aware of her relief at realizing he was breathing deeply, normally. He was sound asleep.
    And then … she was, too.

V
     
    T he boots were a size too big and, without socks, they chafed at his ankle bones, but it was going to be better than walking the city streets barefoot. Fennrys straightened up from tying the bootlaces tight, stretched, and rolled his shoulders. His sword shifted on his back, concealed in a canvas bag designed to hold fencing gear. Fennrys had found it on a shelf and decided to borrow it along with the boots he now wore. In the glow of the dying flashlight, he gazed down the row of sleeping bodies. The girl with the dark hair and startlingly blue eyes was curled on her side, still deeply asleep.
    Fennrys had allowed himself to indulge in a few much-needed hours’ worth of sleep as well, but it was now time for him to go. Past time. Before he did, though, he knelt beside the handsome student who’d almost gotten himself killed during the fight with the draugr and carefully turned his head to the side. The kid— he’s not a kid any more than you are, pal, said a voice in his head; you’re probably the same damn age —was pale, his breathing fairly regular but shallow. Fennrys ran a fingertip lightly over the livid marks on the boy’s face. The bleeding had stopped, but the angry, purplish lines that had begun to fade were starting to reappear under the skin and his flesh was still warm to the touch. Too warm.
    “Damn … ,” Fennrys murmured to himself. The poison of the draugr’s claws was stubborn and strong. Fennrys hesitated for a moment, then reached up and worked loose the knot of the leather cord that held the iron medallion around his throat. It took awhile, as though the knot hadn’t been undone in a very long time—but when it finally came