“Sounds good. Come on, let’s find a back way out of this place.” Jai moved through the front hall and into the dining room, footsteps impressively quiet for someone so big. I followed him, moving past the hulking shapes of the furniture, trying to avoid the dusty sheets.  The floor creaked under my feet, making me wince. I was clumsier than Jai, in spite of being so much smaller than him. 

We moved into the kitchen. It was strange to see china laid out on the table. A pitcher of water, stood empty in the center. Lace placemats and white dishes were covered in layers of dust. As if the family here had been setting the table for dinner when the door burst inwards, spilling the darkness from outside into their home, dragging them into the night.

Jai didn’t spare a glance for the table, instead he went straight for a pair of French doors that led out onto the deck.

“Shouldn’t we check for food?” I drifted towards the cupboards, picturing boxes of twinkies and canned fruit, but Jai shook his head and said, “I checked already, before you came.”

He unlocked one of the doors and pulled it open, making me wince at the rusty creaking sound it made. The sharp smell of night air hit me, and I was suddenly grateful I wasn’t alone anymore. It was getting really dark now.

Jai stepped out onto the deck, moving cautiously, his footsteps soft, his head moved this way and that. Making sure it was clear. After a minute he seemed satisfied, waving me out onto the deck.

“Move fast. The truck isn’t locked.” His voice was low.

I obeyed wordlessly, mimicking his careful movements the best I could as I walked down the back stairs and onto the crunchy grass of the backyard. Sure enough, there was a truck parked on the road just behind the house. An old brown ford that looked like it would fall to pieces if you so much as looked at it. I shot Jai an incredulous look but he didn’t seem to notice.

Really, I couldn’t complain. It was a truck, as long as it moved I was happy.

Completely paranoid, I glanced up and down the street, heart stuttering when I caught sight of a blur of movement, a flicker in the shadows.

“Go,” Jai’s voice was sharp. “Get in the truck, hurry.”

I yanked on the rusted handle of the door, horrified when it wouldn’t budge. It was stuck. Jai was already in the truck now, and he shot me a puzzled look through the dusty window. Behind me the faint  sound of nails dragging over pavement sent goose bumps crawling up both arms. This time I yanked the handle so violently that it gave, and the door flew open, sending me stumbling backwards.

“Get in!” Jai was yelling at me.

I launched myself into the cab of the truck, jeans snagging on the ripped vinyl. The pole of the scythe wacked the top of the doorframe, making my hand sting, and the hour glass tumbled out of my other hand and landed on its side on the truck’s dirty carpet.

“Throw the scythe in the back,” Jai barked at me.

I experienced a flash of reluctance at this, but one glance in the side view mirror made me decide not to argue. There were three shambling figures making their way down the middle of the road towards us. Three black, oily soul suckers.

I chucked the scythe into the back of the truck, wincing at the crash it made, and then swung myself back onto the seat, slamming the door shut. Jai jammed his foot down on the gas pedal with a warning shout. Not realizing the warning was a “we’re going” warning, the sudden motion and lack of seatbelt sent me pitching forward, and I nearly wacked my forehead on the dashboard.

“Ow,” I growled at him. “You trying to knock me out?”

“You trying to get us eaten?” He shot back.

“They don’t eat you.” I settled back in the seat, rubbing the elbow I’d smacked just now. “They suck out your soul.”

“At least you people have figured out that much,” Jai said grimly. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

We were silent for a few seconds after that, and I fixed my eyes on the side view mirror and watched the soul suckers get smaller and smaller was we left them in the dust. I felt a surge of defiance.         Hah, demonic soul-ripping creatures or not, we humans could still out run them in a rickety old Ford.

“You’re already pretty attached to it.”Jai’s deep voice startled me out of my thoughts.

“Huh?”

He made a vague gesture behind him. “The scythe.”

I frowned. “You make it sound…weird or something.”

“It’s not weird, it’s perfectly natural for you.”

I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

He sighed and shifted his gaze back to the road. “The hourglass and scythe are what the gaurdians call "instruments" they're the weapons of our leader, who happened to be kidnapped by Thanatos as he came through her realm."

My mouth dropped open. “So, you're from the other...place or whatever. Across the veil?"

"Yes, I got stuck here when the veil closed. I've been looking for her for the past sixteen years. She could have been in any form, since we were tranfering her soul over to another vessel when Thanatos took her."

A gaped at him. My brain was on overload, trying to fit everything he was telling me in the neat little box that held my perception of the world. Was he really crazy? Was it more far fetched than monsters taking my parent's souls? "So," I gestured at the hourglass. "This is her's then?"

Jai hesitated. "Yes...she's the only one who can make the instruments work."

The inside of the truck was totally silent for a moment. I'd been attemping to process all of this mentally, logging it away somewhere and now it was like I ran into an invisable wall. My breath came out in a rush and I wheezed, "What?

Jai chewed on a fingernail for a moment before he answered. He didn't look at me, since his eyes were fixed to the road. “Thanatos took her soul and put her into a different vessel. A human child. He left her instruments with her though.”

 “Are you…you’re saying…”

“Yes,” he said. Jai’s face was straight. He was totally serious. “I’m talking about you. I'm your gaurdian."

My pulse quickened. What he was saying shouldn’t have shocked me this much. I had known that he was leading up to this, somehow. But it was ridiculous, wasn’t it? I shook my head. “No, that can’t be right…”

“Look,” he said, gently. "You just finished telling me that suckers take people's souls. You really think what I'm telling you is crazier than that?"

“It’s not that!” I protested. “I believe your story. It’s just…I’m not…it’s not me. You’ve got the wrong person!”

“You must have felt it when you touched the hourglass. Because I felt you when you touched it. You lit up like a beacon. How do you think I was able to find you…or at least the same neighbourhood you were in?”

“But…I’m not. I’m just…me. I’ve always been me.” I sputtered, nearly speechless. “My parents would know if I’d been swapped out of some changeling…”

“But you weren’t.” Jai said firmly. “The soul was implanted in you when you were very very small. They would have no idea, you were still developing a personality so they wouldn’t notice the difference.”

This was ridiculous. I folded my arms stubbornly, determined to poke holes in his story. “Okay, so if this Thanatos guy, or whoever…took me…why did he leave the instruments?”

I looked at the hourglass carefully. It still wasn’t broken, and this was the second time I’d thrown it like a maniac. “And how come I never saw it before…” I corrected myself, knowing full well that the attic could have hidden a pink elephant and I wouldn’t have known. “Or rather, why didn’t I feel them up there? Since I apparently have some kind of weird connection.”

                “No one can really divide you from the instruments. They’ll always come back to you. And you wouldn’t have been connected to them until you touched them,” Jai explained. I noticed that he never stopped looking this way and that while he talked to me. His gaze darted up and down the road as we drove onwards. Looking for more suckers, probably.

“You’re connected to them, and we…the guardians, are connected to you. That’s why I felt you when you so strongly when you used the magic of the hourglass. It triggered our connection. But after you stopped using it I had to just guess your location.”

My brows shot up. “So, I actually did surprise you coming into that house where you were?”

Jai snorted. “I knew you were on the run in that neighborhood, but yeah, I didn’t expect you to burst into my hiding place.”

It was all a bit much trying to take this in, and I stared at the hourglass, still sitting sideways on my lap. The white sand rippled back and forth as the truck lurched over the uneven road we were on. Magic instruments, huh? I wasn't sure I was ready to start believing all this crazy stuff. Did I try to duck and roll out of the truck and throw myself to the soul suckers? Or did I go along with his story for now?

“So, what now?” I changed the subject, seeing as how the current one was enough to hurt my head. “We go to the next city, but what then? What’s the city even like?” The back of my neck prickled just thinking about it. For some reason I pictured it as overrun by soul suckers and wandering soulless. I wasn’t sure If I wanted to go there.

“The city is…the city.” The tone of Jai’s voice pretty much confirmed all my fears. “But we’re going to find someone. Two people. We have to find the other guardians.”

“There are other guardians?” Again, my brows shot up. “And they all think I'm...their leader?”

Jai rolled his eyes but he didn’t comment on my snark. “The Lady always has three guardians bound to her.”

“The Lady. Right." I told myself to just go along with it for now. " And then once we find these guardians, then what? We take on this evil guy and save the world?” I pressed my forehead to the cold glass, staring out at the neighborhood as it flicked past. Ruined houses, more shuffling soulless. “There’s nothing left to save anyways.”

“The soul suckers don’t belong here,” Jai said grimly. “Neither does Thanatos. Once the tear in the veil is closed the soul sucker’s link to their world will be severed. They’ll die.”

That made my ears perk. “No more soul suckers?”

His grin was a little savage, and it sent a shiver through me. “No more.”

I drummed my fingers on the plastic doorframe. “So, we find the other two guardians and then we set into motion a fantastic plan that you’ve come up with to stop Thanatos and save the world and all that crap. Then we live happily ever after, right?”

Jai’s grin faded slightly. “Uh, well. We find Manda.”

“Manda,” I repeated. “Manda is the plan. Forgive me if I sound critical, but I don’t know Manda. You sure she’s got some kind of game plan?”

His confident smile was back. “You’ll see when you meet her.”

“How will you know where to find her?”

Jai tapped himself in the center of the chest. “She felt the same thing I did. You practically lit up back there. She’s likely headed in our direction. But the best thing to do for now is head into town and see if we can spot any sign of her.”

I stared at him critically. “Yeah? Everyone in town is going to have heard of her?”

Jai’s mouth quirked into a knowing smile. “You really don’t know Manda.”