Heedless of the pain, I wrapped myself over her, covering her head and shoulders with my body while still trying to protect my own face and neck, sheltering her from the undead storm raging around us.
Jasmine found whatever she was looking for. “Cover your eyes,” she shrieked. Then she flicked what looked like a pillbox before her.
I squeezed my eyes shut as a wickedly bright light ignited. All the air in the room compressed against us, boxing my ears and taking all sound and light with it.
❒ ❒ ❒
I woke up covered in dead crows, cradled around Jasmine. A deadly blond vampire was standing over us, unmistakably pissed off.
I shut my eyes again, completely prepared to ignore him until he went away.
“Don’t make me pick you up, witch,” Kett said. “You won’t like the toll I exact.”
I sat up.
Jasmine groaned. “Did you have to fall on me?”
“I was protecting you.”
“Well, I was protecting us.”
I lifted my arms. Every exposed inch of my limbs was scratched and peck marked. I was smeared with blood. I glanced up at Kett, smiling uneasily. “So … she can control dead animals too.”
He frowned at my observation. Apparently, I was just stating the obvious again.
“How long do you think she collected them?” Jasmine asked. Then she shrieked and pulled a dead chickadee out of her ample cleavage.
“The necromancer is gone,” Kett said. “Find her, or I will. Nigel is looking for the boy.” He left the room.
“He’s not as cute when he’s being an asshole,” Jasmine said.
I snorted, scrambling to my feet, then helping her up. The living room was covered in dozens and dozens of dead birds.
“What did you throw at them?”
“Just a disruption charge.” Jasmine attempted to straighten her torn clothing. Her suede jacket was probably salvageable, but I wasn’t sure I could say the same about my trench coat. “If Teresa had still been around, she could probably have animated them again.”
“I’m glad you had it.”
“It was my last one. And they’re damn expensive. I’m adding a handling charge to my bill.”
I smoothed my hands over my hair, which was in utter disarray all around my head and shoulders.
“Stop,” Jasmine said. “You’re just smearing blood all over. We’d better wash. And find some disinfectant. We don’t want to catch some zombie virus.”
“I don’t think it works like that.”
“Yeah? You want to risk it?”
I didn’t.
So after turning on some lights and skulking around the house, we found the bathroom, dug through Teresa’s well-stocked cupboards, and patched ourselves up.
❒ ❒ ❒
Kett and Nigel were waiting for us in the living room. The dark-haired vampire was seated on the couch with his head cradled in his hands. Kett stood by the fireplace, gazing out at the sporadically lit street. Every last dead bird had been removed from the room, and I wondered whether Kett had forced the cleanup duties onto Nigel. Such a task seemed beneath the executioner of the Conclave. I also wondered where they’d piled the dead birds, but then I shook off the creepy thought.
Kett cast a dispassionate gaze over our patched arms and faces. “I assume one of you can track the necromancer?”
“You can’t?” Jasmine asked, heavy on the snark.
“She moves as though human.” The vampire’s voice was edged with barely concealed fury. “So no, not without systematically entering each and every house in the vicinity where anyone is awake.”
“The charm Teresa wears is powerful,” I said. “Even Pearl was impressed.”
“Yes, a delightful piece of magic.” Kett didn’t sound all that delighted, though. “I’ll thank the Godfreys next time I see them.”
“She left her purse,” Nigel said, gesturing toward the contents of a bag strewn across the oak coffee table. “And her car.”
“Credit cards?” Jasmine reached for the wallet nestled in among keys, a miniature Kleenex package, various lip balms, and a hairbrush.
Nigel hunched his shoulders as she drew near, but he didn’t attempt to rip her throat out. So that was a bonus.
“That’ll take too long,” I said. “We need to find her quickly, or call in Pearl’s extraction team.”
“A tracking spell?” Nigel asked. “There is loose hair in the brush.” He gestured a long-fingered hand toward the table. He was still too skinny for his frame. Almost gaunt. His movements were wooden, as if he were still learning how to be in his own body.
I shook my head. “I imagine the charm blocks magic detection as well. Though someone more skilled at tracking could probably break it.”
“I’m not handing this issue over to the Convocation, witch,” Kett said. “If the boy is loose, his body count will eventually lead me to him.”
I glared at him.
He stared back at me coolly, then transferred his ire to Nigel’s bowed head. “If his master was at all useful, he would know exactly where his child was at all times.”
“I tried to find him,” Nigel said quietly and without looking up. “But I can’t sense him. Not in the least.”
“Perhaps the boy isn’t fully transformed.” Kett’s tone softened. “It’s possible he is more difficult to track in his only partially realized form.” He turned his gaze on me, raising an eyebrow. “Shall we go with my plan, then?”
I jutted my chin out at his threat of pillaging the neighbors. “If you want to find an Adept, you just need to think like that Adept.”
“You are endlessly helpful, Ms. Fairchild.”
I glanced over at Jasmine, who’d arranged every card in Teresa’s wallet and was taking pictures of them with her phone. “If you were a necromancer, where would you go to hide?” I asked.
She glanced over her shoulder at me. Then she laughed, opening up the browser on her phone.
“Where?” Nigel asked.
“A cemetery,” I said. “That’s where her power will be the most concentrated. Though how exactly a necromancer fights witches … or vampires, for that matter, I don’t know.”
Jasmine held up her phone, looking grim. A map with a blue dot was displayed on it. Apparently, Teresa lived two blocks from Pleasant View Cemetery.
“But I guess we’re about to find out,” I said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We walked, circling the far side of the house in the opposite direction to how we’d driven in both times before. Not having passed through that part of the neighborhood, we had completely missed the presence of a cemetery. Living near such a site made complete sense for a wielder of death magic, especially one who was supposed to be in hiding and might have foreseen a need for a fallback location that was amenable to her power. But we hadn’t known Teresa Garrick was a necromancer the first time we knocked on her door.
We split up to circle the stone wall that skirted the two-block radius of the cemetery site. Jasmine was with me, Nigel with Kett, just in case we picked up hints of Teresa, Benjamin, or any residual magic.
We didn’t find anything.
Thankfully, the neighborhood was locked down and deeply asleep. If any of Teresa’s neighbors worked nights, they were already gone for the evening. I didn’t even see a single cat prowling the shadows.
We met up again at the cemetery’s gated entrance. It was locked, of course, but Kett wrenched it open with a single tug, bending the metal as if it might be toffee rather than thick wrought iron.
Jasmine was hunched over, digging through her bag. “I’ve got a mixture of distraction spells,” she muttered. “Nothing that’s going to cloak a massive magical surge, but enough to turn away any stray late-night pedestrians. Oh! And some sound mufflers.”
“How do we even know she’s in there?” Nigel stood off to the side, his hands buried so deeply in his pockets that it seemed as though he was afraid to let them loose.
“She’s in there,” K
ett murmured. “The Garricks have a historic connection to cemeteries and graveyards, often making their living owning and running them.”
“Teresa was maybe ten or eleven years old when her parents … her entire family were slaughtered,” I said. “Her connection to them, to her own history, must be tenuous.”
“What were you doing at ten, Wisteria?” Kett asked pointedly.
Jasmine glanced over at me.
I didn’t answer.
I had seen my family wield magic my entire life. If pressed, I could probably call upon any or all of those workings. I’d be unsuccessful at casting them, of course. But that wasn’t Kett’s point.
“Jasmine,” he said, continuing as if he hadn’t been needling me a moment before. “Please place whatever spells or charms you have at the perimeter of the graveyard, keeping them off the property itself.”
“I’m not a moron,” Jasmine muttered.
“Why off the property?” Nigel asked.
“Ownership,” I said. “Even if Teresa doesn’t legally own this graveyard, she’s most likely claimed it for herself. That might have implications on the effectiveness of the spells.”
“She’ll have claimed it,” Kett said. “She’s not stupid.”
Jasmine counted the collection of buttons, rocks, and other little bits that she’d laid out on the sidewalk before her feet. Each held a single spell. “Twelve,” she said. “It will be a thin spread.”
“Concentrate on the entrance and this block specifically,” Kett said. “Then spread them as evenly as possible. Wisteria, Nigel, and I will enter the property.”
“It’ll take me a while to trigger them all.”
Kett glanced at my cousin. “Best get started then.”
Jasmine looked over at me for confirmation.
“Don’t enter the graveyard,” I said. “If you make it back around to here and we’re still inside, text Pearl with an update.”
“But —”
“Triggering that many spells will drain your magic,” I said brusquely.
Jasmine frowned. “Hardly.”
I stared her down. She dropped her gaze, gathering the collection of spells into the various pockets of her jacket, jeans, and satchel. I assumed she was grouping them by specific charm.
Kett was watching our exchange too closely for my liking, but there was nothing I could do about it. Jasmine was a strong tech witch. Possibly the best in North America. But she wasn’t fantastic at wielding other magic, hence the robust collection of spells that she traded or outright purchased. Her defensive capabilities were limited.
Of course, mine were nonexistent.
I twisted my white-picket-fence bracelet on my right wrist.
Jasmine straightened. I grasped her hand briefly before she stepped to one side of the gate to set, then trigger, the first deflection spell.
“I’m not going,” Nigel said abruptly. “I’m just a liability. I’ll watch the entrance. I can text you if someone comes or goes. And … if I see Benjamin, I can try to hold him.”
“He is your progeny,” Kett said wryly. “You should hold sway over him.”
Nigel nodded doubtfully.
“Stay in the shadows,” Kett said. Then he stepped through the gate.
“I assume you’ll be okay out here alone with my cousin?” I asked Nigel pointedly.
“I have myself under control, witch,” he said stiffly.
I met Jasmine’s worried gaze, offering her a smile I didn’t feel. Then I stepped through the gate and followed a vampire into a graveyard way after dark.
That wasn’t intensely worrisome at all.
I took a deep breath, forcing myself to keep calm.
The sound of iron scraping on iron came from behind me. I glanced back, barely able to see my cousin as she sealed the entrance behind me. My heart rate spiked.
“I’ll see you soon,” she called quietly. Then she set off down the block to place the remainder of the spells.
Well-trimmed grass spread out on either side of me. I would have imagined it as a lush green by day, but could barely distinguish any color at all beneath the dark, cloudy sky. Headstones of various shapes and sizes jutted out of the grass, row upon organized row. I glanced around the wide paved pathway I was traversing, wishing for a flashlight with every step I moved away from the streetlights that ringed the cemetery. Or to have the ability to snap my fingers and call up a light spell — a bit of magic I had learned before I was four years old.
But I didn’t do that sort of magic anymore.
Kett appeared at my side. His pale skin was practically reflective, and I could see him without effort. “I’ve done a circuit,” he whispered. “But she’s well hidden.”
A circuit? Of the entire two-block radius? In what? Five minutes?
“I’ll lead you to the center where the paths cross,” Kett said. “You’ll reach out for magic from there, then point me in the correct direction.”
I opened my mouth to mention that if he couldn’t feel any magic, it was unlikely that I could, but Kett had swept me into his arms and was dashing deeper into the graveyard before I could even speak.
So apparently, ‘lead you’ was a euphemism for ‘carry you without permission.’
The swiftness of our passage forced all the air from my lungs, pressing me so harshly against Kett — whose entire body felt as though it was constructed out of granite — that my ribs threatened to crack.
Moments later, I was back on my feet and gasping for air. My head swam. We were standing deep within the night-shrouded graveyard now.
“Hold me tighter next time,” Kett said. His tone was edged in judgement, though he kept a steadying hand on my back.
I stepped away from him, carefully planting my feet on the pavement and inhaling deeply. There wasn’t going to be a ‘next time’ for the vampire and me, not even if Pearl Godfrey personally requested I work with him. I was just a magical device to him. A tool to be used — and now even physically manipulated — by his will.
“You’re angry,” Kett said.
I didn’t answer, because I was just as capable of ignoring stupid statements as he was. Instead, I closed my eyes and reached out my hands, seeking shimmers of residual magic within the darkness.
“Your magic rolls off you when you’re angry,” he said. “You control all the wrong emotions, Wisteria Fairchild.”
“You’re in my way,” I snapped. “Stand at my back.”
Kett slipped in behind me. It was like being backed by a stone wall, though he didn’t touch me.
I began to rotate slowly, and the vampire moved with me. If the necromancer was hidden behind the witch-crafted charm, I wouldn’t be able to pick up her magic, the same as Kett couldn’t.
But I could look for older layers of residual, similar to what I would use to reconstruct a historical magical event. Perhaps of another time Teresa had passed through the graveyard without her charm, or …
“There,” I murmured. I stepped onto the grass and slowly crossed through two rows of headstones until I was standing before a small white stone crypt. “What’s that?”
I leaned down to cup my hand around the shimmer of residual magic I’d found at the edge of the tomb. “Can you see this?” I asked Kett over my shoulder. “It’s old. I’m not sure it’s connected —”
“No matter,” he said.
A dark-winged form appeared out of the night, swooping low over our heads and landing on the edge of the crypt. Once there, the reanimated crow peered down at us with white, lifeless eyes.
I shuddered.
“She’s found us,” Kett said.
Something shifted in the air around me, stirring the strands of hair that had loosened from my French twist. It wasn’t magic. Or, rather, it wasn’t magic I’d ever felt before.
I straightened, following Kett’s gaze back toward the main path. “What do you mean?”
“Apparently, Garrick blood runs true.”
The grass to my immediate right heaved upward, di
rt churning and wooden shards thrust to the surface as the occupant of the grave wrenched itself free of its earthy confines.
I stumbled back, slamming against Kett and bruising my left shoulder.
The corpse pulling itself free of the grave was fresh enough that it still had hair and sinew attached to its graying skeleton. Then the sod and soil churned to our left. A thick-boned arm thrust free of the ground, clawing forward as it dragged a head and upper body into the night air.
Both zombies homed in on us. With the crypt behind us, our only clear route was back toward the main path.
“Oh, Jesus,” I whispered. “Oh, mother of God. Please, Lord.”
Nothing like a zombie rising to convert a witch to Christianity.
“Don’t fret,” Kett said, patting my shoulder awkwardly. “I doubt she can raise more than two or three at a time.”
Jesus Christ. I was cowering against a vampire like some damsel in bloody distress.
I pushed away from Kett. He let me go.
I was a witch. Witches didn’t cower in the face of magic. I was a Fairchild — whether I wanted to be or not. Fairchilds didn’t hide from the darkness —
The earth churned above four more graves. And those were only the ones I could see in the intermittent moonlight.
I sidestepped the nearest zombie to my right, zigzagging through the corpses freeing themselves from their graves all around us as I ran for the main path.
Kett moved with me.
We were past the last row of headstones, four or so feet from the pavement, when something grabbed my ankle.
I shrieked despite my resolve as I almost went down. Kett caught me. I twisted to look behind me. I was held fast by a rotting arm. A zombie had grabbed me even before wrenching itself free from its grave.
Looking back was a mistake. Dozens of zombies had freed themselves from the earth and were shuffling their way toward us. Still more corpses in various stages of decay were pulling themselves from their final resting places.
Kett snapped the arm holding my ankle in two, then flicked the severed limb back behind us. It slammed into the bony forehead of the walking corpse nearest us. The zombie’s head snapped back with the force of the blow, bone splintered. The vampire had broken its neck with a flick of his wrist.
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