The Bone Orchard by Abigail Roux Read Free Book Online Page A

cold fingertips against the searing heat of Ezra’s cheek. “I would stay just for you, if I’m given the choice. But I’d be a selfish dog if I did.”
    “Ambrose.”
    “The living shouldn’t wait on the dead, Ezra. You’d have no kind of life with me as your constant companion. Soon enough I’d be your only companion, and what good would your life be without someone warm to hold to you?”
    “I don’t care about that,” Ezra insisted, and his resolute tone matched the steel in his kind eyes. “I’ve found more fascinating conversation with you in two days than with a year of warm companions.”
    Ambrose fought the feeling spreading through him, but it was useless. When he was alive, he might have called it warmth. Now, though, without the sensation of real warmth, it simply felt like coming home. “If only I’d met you before he drove me to desperation. I might have had reason to . . . second-guess my bravery.”
    Ezra closed his eyes and lowered his head, turning away. A tear trailed down his cheek, and he quickly swiped it off. “It’s odd to mourn the loss of someone sitting beside me.”
    Ambrose ran his fingers down Ezra’s back, even knowing the touch would be cold comfort. “It’s odd to be lost.”
    “It’s selfish of me to ask you to stay.” Ezra shook his head. “To give up . . . Forget I asked. Forget I said it at all.”
    A sound like lightning striking ripped through the peaceful night, and Ambrose instinctively covered his head, flinching away from a light as bright as any sun. He’d heard enough cannons fire, seen enough barrages during the war, to know when to duck and cover.
    “Ambrose? What is it? Is it him? Are you okay?” Ezra touched his shoulder, then his back. His fear made the touch solid and somehow comforting, even as Ezra’s hand burned him.
    Ambrose raised his head, peering around carefully. “What in the damn hell?”
    They both scrambled to their feet, Ambrose still looking everywhere, Ezra watching him in utter confusion.
    “Did you see it? Hear it?”
    Ezra shook his head. “I neither saw nor heard anything but the horses in the stables neighing.”
    Ambrose searched frantically through the darkness, and finally he saw the figure over Ezra’s shoulder, stumbling across the gallows. His hands and feet were bare and shackled in irons, and the hangman’s noose was still around his neck and draped across his shoulder. The black hood that had shielded onlookers from the ugliness of his death was still on his head, but Boone Jennings was reaching up to yank it off.
    “There,” Ambrose whispered.
    Jennings ripped the hood off and tossed it to the ground, his wild eyes searching around him. They landed on Ambrose, and a sneer curled his lip. “You,” he growled.
    His eyes were red and bulging, his once-handsome face distorted and blue in death. He was the very picture of a demon straight out of Hell.
    “I come to finish what I started, Jennings,” Ambrose called out. From the corner of his eye, he could see Ezra frantically trying to see Jennings, trying to figure out where he might be. Ambrose stepped in front of him, putting himself between Jennings and Ezra.
    Jennings growled. “You damn spook. Too stubborn to die once, I’ll just make sure you go again!” He went for a gun, but he was wearing none. He’d been stripped of everything before his hanging.
    Ambrose drew on him and fired.
    The slug hit him in the shoulder, the very spot where Ambrose had hit him in the saloon the night he’d died. Jennings stumbled back, looking at his shoulder in shock. Then he reached up to pat at the bloody spot there. Ambrose trotted toward the gallows to take another shot, but to his horror, Jennings shoved two fingers into the bullet wound.
    It made a sound like a boot pulling out of the mud as Jennings tugged the bullet from his shoulder and held it up like a prize, light shining on glistening blood. He dropped it to the wooden floor of the gallows, and a moment later,