Nina Redfeather's Arc

Chapter 10 of 12

Both creatures were gone, but Nina still did not sleep. The shadow had chosen her first. It had pointed from her dreams, night after night, before she ever found the hut or the bird or the demon. She needed to know why. Without that answer, there was nothing left to chase. She went to her father's old study at the back of the lodge, where the timber walls still smelled of smoke, and knelt by his small bookcase. The tomes were bound in cracked leather and strange metal. She had used two of them already, for the summoning and the banishing. Now she pulled out the ones she had skipped. She searched past midnight, pages sharp under her fingers. Then she found a thin red book near the bottom shelf. Her father's handwriting filled the margins. On one page he had drawn the shadow. The same shape from her dreams. Under the drawing he had written words she could finally read. The shadow does not choose at random. It comes to blood that opened the door before. A keeper's line. She turned the page. Her father had written his own name. Below it, her grandmother's. Below that, hers. Cold moved through her. Her family had kept the door. For years. Her father had summoned the demon once too. The shadow had not picked her by chance. It had come to her because her blood held the key, the same blood that closed the door long ago. "You read it at last." The voice slid up from the floor. Nina spun. Her own shadow still lay flat behind her, doing what she did. But a second shadow pooled by the bookcase, free of any wall or lamp. Umbral Nightshade. The shadow demon she had released to the mountain cave three nights before. His white eyes opened in the dark shape. "You went home," she said. "I freed you." "The door is open," he hissed. "I can cross it now. You left it open, keeper." His clawed hand rose from the floor and tapped the red book. "Your blood holds the lock. That is why I came to you. That is why the bird came. We could not go home until a keeper opened the way." Nina gripped the book. "Then it is done. The door is open. You are home." "Open," he said. "Not closed." His shape thinned and widened across the floorboards. "Others wait in the cave. They want out. And only a keeper can shut the door again." He slid back under the floor and was gone. Nina sat alone with the book. She had her answer. The shadow chose her because of her blood, because her family guarded the door. But opening it had let more than the bird and demon loose. The door she had worked so hard to open now had to be closed. And she was the only one who could do it.