BRACE YOURSELF BEFORE YOU READ ON, I BEG YOU

As I said: They were too late.

It was an admirable effort on their part, charging into the city like they did, but the city was already in chaos when they arrived. Alice, who had been holding Laylee’s hand this whole time, was helping the mordeshoor get stronger in every moment. Laylee’s eyes occasionally flickered open long enough to retain new information about their situation and, fortified anew, she was ready to guide with her eyes when necessary.

Unluckily, there was little to be done.

The mass of happy people they’d seen swarming the streets just hours before was nowhere to be found. Instead, bloodcurdling screams rang out across the city, parents fainting in the streets while their children sobbed helplessly at their sides. Food stalls had been knocked sideways; lanterns had been shattered on sidewalks; cocktails of blood and pomegranate juice dripped down snowy banks and streets, scarlet tendrils snaking across the land.

Of the forty spirits unleashed upon the city, just under half of them had already unzipped humans from their flesh. That left twenty-two of them wandering about the city, still haunting the remaining humans, taking their time choosing which skin they liked best.

This created two very awful scenes in the street.

First, and perhaps most disturbing: The humans whose skins had been harvested were still alive. They stumbled around, muscle and bone exposed to the elements, bleeding uncontrollably and retching at intervals. They could survive in this condition for no more than an hour, during which time the ghosts who’d stolen their skins were afforded the opportunity to return the skin to its owner. If not, the bloody remains would simply collapse. We could not know exactly how long it had been since their skins were stolen, but it had been at least some many minutes, and time was running out. Worse still: It was horrifying to witness. Eighteen skinless bodies staggered in the ice and snow, slipping repeatedly in pools of their own blood and bile, while their children looked on in horror. Thus far, only adult bodies had been chosen for harvest, as their skins were most roomy.

Which brings us to the second set of awful scenes in the street: The ghosts, who’d eagerly and clumsily pulled on their fresh human flesh, could not understand why they weren’t immediately accepted by the rest of the living society. They stumbled around, untroubled and excited to join the others in the night’s festivities, and were made only angrier by the full and thorough rejections they received. They finally looked like the others, didn’t they? They looked like they used to, didn’t they?

The trouble was, the spirits had no access to a mirror; if they had, they might’ve noticed that the skins they’d stretched over their spirits were bunched up in all the wrong places—and too tight in others. It had been a long time since they’d been human, you see, and they couldn’t remember where everything was supposed to go. Their noses were on their foreheads and their lips were where the nose should be; fingers were only half filled, and elbows had gone where shoulders should; one ghost had put his leg into an arm, and another had zipped the whole thing on backward, and—anyway, suffice it to say that they were not as attractive as they’d hoped to be.

So there it was: The beautiful, incomparable streets of Whichwood had gone slippery with the blood of the still-living, who staggered sideways and frontways, scarlet icicles forming along their beating hearts as fresh blood dripped down their vulnerable bodies.

Seeing all this, Benyamin’s mother fell to her knees.

She was a strong woman with an iron will, but this was too much even for her to stand. Her legs, already weak from the effort to get her here, could no longer keep her steady, and so she sank to the ground, her mouth unhinged in shock, as the dead skins taunted the stumbling remains, and the whole of Whichwood lost their minds in horror.

Still, there was work to be done.

The children were unusually composed in the face of unspeakable terrors. For Alice and Oliver and Benyamin, the situation felt somehow surreal, intangible, and dreamlike, but for Laylee—well, for Laylee, it was just another day at work.

The mordeshoor, who’d been invigorated enough to speak clearly, asked Alice to unhook the whip hung from her trusty tool belt. Alice quickly complied and, with Laylee’s careful permission and instruction, cracked the whip through the air three times.

The spirits—far and wide—stood still.

Alice cracked it thrice more. The vagabond spirits, still susceptible to the methods of the mordeshoor, screamed out in surprise. Once she knew she had their attention, Laylee spoke quietly. Her words were for the spirits alone, and she knew they would hear her.

“Come here,” she said softly. “I’d like to speak with you.” And she instructed Alice to crack the whip until the ghosts came.

Benyamin, meanwhile, had formed a plan of his own. With enough time, perhaps Laylee could convince the ghosts to give up their human skins, but right now they needed a temporary solution for these quickly deteriorating bodies, and fast. Benyamin spoke quietly and urgently with his creatures, and though no one could’ve known for sure that Benyamin’s plan would work, the insects quickly agreed to help. But this was the kind of plan that would require the assistance of nearly all the many-legged residents of Whichwood, not merely the ones who were loyal to Benyamin. Haftpa set off with his troops at once, promising Benyamin that they would return with as many recruits as possible.