Free The Legend Thief by Unknown Page A

of juice.
     
    Sky plummeted. He slapped his Shimmer and crashed into a branch, snapping it in two. He ricocheted down the tree, bouncing around, and then he smashed into the ground.
     
    His Shimmer flickered out at the same time as his Fog and he rolled to his back, groaning.
     
    Dense Fog coated the forest. The Darkhorn screeched, but she sounded far away, and getting farther. Sky's twists and turns within the Fog had thrown her from his trail. He was safe for now.
     
    Rocks poked him in the back and a branch had worked its way into an awkward position, but he didn't care. Piebalds had died tonight because of his stupidity. He should've known better than to reach out for Fred like that with the Darkhorn and Bedlam nearby .· That reaching was part of edgewalking, part of Bedlam and the Darkhorn's domain, and they were infinitely better at it than him. If he'd thought it through, he would've realized: If he could reach out, they could reach back. Why did everything and everyone around him keep dying? The Piebalds, hundreds of hunters when he was young, including several of his friends' parents, and Phineas, Errand, Crystal, Andrew, Hands, T-Bone ... Sky stopped himself. Not them. Not the monster hunters. Not his friends. Nackles would get them out. He had to believe that, even if it was hard.
     
    Something crunched nearby, and Sky stopped berating himself. He sat up hesitantly and looked around, but the Fog remained as impenetrable as ever.
     
    More crunching, and then quiet.
     
    Fearing that the Darkhorn had circled back, Sky climbed to his feet and stepped around the tree. On the other side, he found a scruffy man with a scraggly beard wearing a dingy blue jump suit. The man sat casually on a tree stump, holding a torn picture in one hand and eating from a bag of Doritos with the other.
     
    Sky glanced around nervously, wondering if the Darkhorn was messing with him-if she'd pulled him into a nightmare without him knowing. And then he realized that he recognized the man.
     
    " Mister . .." Sky didn't know the man's last name. "Mister Janitor, are 'you okay?"
     
    Crunch, crunch, crunch. Orange cheese and bits of tortilla chip lived in the mangy beard like squirrels nestling down for winter.
     
    Sky stepped closer. The poor man had mental problems, he knew. Last year the janitor had helped him out of a bind with Crenshaw, and then he'd made the strangest comment about urinal cakes.
     
    "Forest saltines taste like urinal cakes," the janitor now muttered.
     
    A comment very much like that, in fact.
     
    Without taking his eyes from the picture, the janitor held out the bag of Doritos, not to Sky, but to the empty space slightly to the left of Sky.
     
    Sky glanced over, afraid he might find someone there. No one was, but that made him more frightened, not less.
     
    "Are you lost?" Sky asked hesitantly; he was beginning to think he might prefer the Darkhorn. "Do you need help finding your way back to Exile?"
     
    The janitor ate another Dorito. A checkered picnic blanket was spread out in front of him.
     
    Slowly, Sky stepped up behind him and looked down at the picture, which had been ripped from top to bottom so that half was missing. The picture showed a woman who looked somehow familiar. She wore jeans and a grungy T-shirt and her charcoal hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail. In the background, he saw one of the spires of Arkhon Academy. An arm clothed in a white dress shirt was wrapped around the woman's shoulder.
     
    The more Sky stared at the woman, the more familiar she seemed.
     
    "I know her ... , " Sky muttered, the memory nagging at him. The Dorito paused halfway to the janitor's mouth.
     
    "We won't let anything hurt you," the janitor promised without turning, his voice gentle, as if he were talking to a small child.
     
    Sky shied away, taking several steps back. "Excuse me?"
     
    "Not monsters, not hunters, not the Arkhon himself, no matter how badly he wants you," the janitor continued.