Celeste Ledgerwood's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Celeste knelt at the well and looked down. Names floated in the dark water, each one a faint gold light. The rat had stolen them, and now they hid below. Her new ledger sat open on a crate behind her, one line short for every glow. She could not balance the book until she pulled them out. "Great," she said. "The stuff dreams are made of. And it's at the bottom of a wishing well." The well bristled with dagger blades. Each tip gave off a strange color. One dripped poison. One buzzed with laughter. One smelled like a barn. She could not just reach in. She needed the names, not a hand full of fart-magic steel. Then the crying started. A baby sat on the well's rim. Red skin. Two small horns. Little bat wings folded on his back. He wailed loud enough to rattle her teeth. "Where did you come from?" Celeste asked. The baby answered by screaming harder. The gold names in the water shivered at the sound. Warren backed away, ears flat. "Don't touch it," the rabbit warned. "That's Azrael. He never stops. Not without platypus milk, and every bottle in town is poisoned." He'd fought a winged rat for years without flinching, but this child made him tremble. Celeste watched the water. Each scream pushed the gold lights up, closer to the surface. "Wait," she said. "He's doing my job for me." The sound worked like a tide. It lifted the names toward her reaching fingers. But the daggers reacted too. The screaming stirred them. Blades began to spin. The whole well started to whirl, faster and faster, a churn of poison and yodels and blood. She had one shot before the spin swallowed everything. Celeste grabbed her pen. She held it over the open ledger. "Cry, kid," she said. "Best performance of your life." Azrael shrieked. A wave of gold names burst up over the rim. Celeste's pen flew. She caught each name as it passed and pinned it to a line. One. Ten. Forty. Her hand cramped. The whirling daggers flung poison drops past her cheek. She kept writing. The last gold light hit the page and stuck. The well went still. The daggers slowed. The water turned plain and dark. Every stolen name now sat in her ledger, black ink, balanced at last. Celeste breathed hard and closed the book. "And that's a wrap." Then Azrael's cry cut off. His face went pale gray. He gagged, and gold light leaked from his open mouth. He hadn't just pushed the names up. He'd swallowed some. Now they glowed inside him, and he was choking on souls. Warren stared. "He needs the milk," the rabbit said. "Or those names die with him." Celeste looked at the baby. Her ledger was full. And now it might cost her a life to keep it that way.