Free Never Trust a Dead Man by Vivian Vande Velde

Instead, he asked, "Did Raedan know, too?"
    Farold shrugged. "I didn't tell him. But maybe Merton did. We were tired of hearing you brag about it," he finished. "I said I'd keep it because we both knew if Merton had it, he'd never be able to keep a straight face once you started asking. But I would have given it back."
    "Did he know where you kept it?"
Merton?
he thought.
Merton, and maybe Raedan?
    Farold gave a leathery shrug of his wings. "I don't think I ever specifically said," he told Selwyn. "But it was in my clothes chest—easy enough to find."
    "I don't think a man goes into another man's room intent on killing him and only then thinks to start looking for a weapon."
    "Why would Merton come into my room intent on killing me?" Farold asked.
    "Why else would he come in, in the middle of the night, quiet enough not to wake you?"
    "We don't know that he did." Farold was raising his voice, just as Selwyn was. "I thought you said it was Linton who killed me."
    "I don't know," Selwyn shouted at him. "I don't know who did it. I said it
might be
Linton.
Maybe
it was Merton. Maybe it was somebody else.
I
wasn't there, too stupid to wake up from being murdered:
You
were." It was hard to think of Merton as a murderer, but then it was hard to think of him as a thief—or, at best, as a trickster who was willing to let the trick go on even as Selwyn was being left in the cave to die.
    "Well, don't take your bad temper out on me," Farold said. "I'd rather eat bugs than take this abuse." He fluttered off into the night, leaving Selwyn truly alone.

TEN
    When Selwyn awoke after a few hours of fitful sleep, he was surprised to find Farold had returned and was once more hanging upside down from his branch. After last night, he wouldn't have been surprised to find himself abandoned.
    Selwyn drank from the river and found a few more handsful of berries, but the season was nearly over and most of the berries were withered and brown and did little to satisfy his hunger. And in all this while, Farold hadn't budged. "Farold," he called.
    Farold continued to hang, his wings wrapped around himself.
    "Farold, time to go."
    No reaction.
    Maybe he had decided to return to the afterlife, as he had threatened. Or maybe the bat body itself had died. Where would
that
leave Farold?
    Alarmed, Selwyn poked at the tiny form, which shuddered and pulled its wings tighter—proving it was alive, anyway. "Go away," Farold mumbled sleepily.
    Selwyn leaned in closer, so that he could simultaneously poke a second time and yell into the bat's enormous ears: "Farold, you lazy lout! Wake up!"
    The bat snarled at him, showing an incredible number of tiny but very sharp teeth.
    Selwyn jumped back, but the bat didn't lunge. It once more closed its eyes.
    "Farold," Selwyn urged. "It's morning."
    "I know," Farold said, never opening his eyes. "Bats are nocturnal."
    "You're not a bat," Selwyn tried to reason with him. "Not really."
    "Tell my body that. Besides, I was up all night"
    "So was I."
    "Maybe some fool has turned you into a bat, too," Farold said. "Maybe you better check."
    Selwyn shook Farold's branch. Farold's tiny clawed feet held on. He opened one eye to glare at Selwyn. "Go away," Farold told him. "Come back at sunset."
    "I'm not going to waste a whole day waiting for you." A whole hard-earned day.
    "Then go without me," Farold said. "You were the one who
had
to have a nap last night when it was a sensible time to get started. Don't talk to me about lazy."
    "We agreed," Selwyn said, which they hadn't—not exactly—"that it was no good going at night. The villagers would have run us off."
    "You can't fight instinct," Farold said from around a yawn.
    Selwyn didn't dare leave him. Farold might not be able to find Penryth on his own. Last night, at the beginning, he hadn't known that bats can't stand; he had barely been able to manage flying. Things would have to look disconcertingly different for someone who only recently found himself merely a finger's