Free Lending Light (Gives Light Series Book 5) by Rose Christo

whether there was someone looking out for him, someone other than Catherine Looks Over, who was old and white-haired and not a lot of fun for a teenage guy to hang around.  Every question that came to mind left me before it reached my lips.  Sleeping Fox had said that I was just like my father.  Maybe I was worse.  I couldn't even make sure Skylar was being taken care of.  He had no voice he could ask for help with.  It was my family's fault he'd lost that voice.
    The next night's dinner continued in the same vein.  Isaac Takes Flight sat by the fire singing a song about Coyote, Isampu, the Liar.  It went like this:
    Isampu peentsi
    Pennan kwasin katsunka
    Uu piyaatehki,
    Piyaatehki,
    Piyaatehki.
    Which means:
    Boisterous Coyote
    On the end of his tail
    Carries the child away,
    Away,
    Away.
    It was a part of an old story we liked to tell our children.  "If you don't behave, Coyote's going to come and kidnap you, and then what?"
    "Haiya wain!" Isaac said; which doesn't mean anything, it's just something we say when we finish a song.  Everyone clapped for him.  I didn't clap because his voice sucked.  I was sketching insects in my notebook when Skylar came and sat with me again.  He leaned over, trying to get a look at my paper.  I came to the conclusion that he was suicidal.
    "It's an atlas moth," I said.
    I showed him the lined pages in my notebook.  His head canted for a better view, his curls touching his jaw.
    I took the notebook back, shading in the moth's antennas.  "When it hatches from its cocoon," I said, "it doesn't have a mouth.  It starves to death in a week."
    Skylar glanced at me, then away.  I avoided his gaze, the front of his throat.  I closed my book and stood up.  I said I was going for a walk.  Skylar kept looking at me, coloring the space around us in lush lights.  Where was Annie Little Hawk?  I felt guilty about leaving Skylar by his lonesome.
    "Are you coming or not?" I said.
    Skylar stood up.  He followed me away from the stone firepit, north to the crossroads.  I chose a pretty lousy time to remember that Uncle Gabriel had asked me to stay away from him.  It was like even Uncle Gabriel didn't trust that I could control myself.  Maybe Sleeping Fox was right about me; maybe I was exactly like my father.  Sleeping Fox must have believed it pretty strongly if he was willing to risk a second trip to the hospital to drive the point home.
    The communal bonfire fell away behind me.  I stopped walking.  Skylar hovered at my side, hesitating, like maybe he thought I was about to axe him.  I swallowed a humorless laugh.  I dragged dirty fingers through my dirty hair.  I was losing my mind.
    "It's even worse with you here," I said.
    Skylar's head tilted to one side, without judgment.
    "Everyone looks at me and sees Dad," I explained, desperate.  "Everyone.  All my life, it's like they've been waiting for me to grow up and kill someone.  And now you're here.  They're probably taking bets back there.  'Is he killing the white kid now?' "
    There.  I'd said it.  My chest felt empty, relieved of secrets, yet hollow, deprived of warmth.  Shadows spiraled down the crossroads toward me, but recoiled.  They were afraid of Skylar.  Skylar shook his head just once.  You're wrong .  All I could do was laugh without purpose.  I was my father.  Dad killed seven women.  I killed one.
    Skylar grabbed my arm.
    The feelings flooding through me weren't mine.  Compassion and misery broiled in my veins simultaneously, most of it compassion.  Confusion followed, and a tinge of waning fear.  Under the first layer of feelings lay a hidden second.  Loneliness.  Insecure in his loneliness, Skylar chased people who looked like his mother's murderer.  Maybe I was his last living link to his mother.  Maybe he was my last living link to my father.
    Skylar's feelings singed me like slow lightning, rotting my synapses in black flakes, dulling the signals to my brain.  I couldn't think.  I