I looked away, ignoring the twisty, fluttery feeling fil ing my stomach. “So how does this work?”
“You can feel the spel , yes?” the gray man asked, and at my nod he said, “Good. When you find the accomplice, and they are outside of Faerie, use the spel . We wil feel it. We wil al feel it.”
As in al the soul col ectors? I imagined every soul As in al the soul col ectors? I imagined every soul col ector in the world appearing around me and then I shivered, making a mental note not to poke at the spel . I nodded as the goons jerked the back car door open.
Time’s up.
“Be safe. We hope to see you at the bridge,” the gray man said before vanishing.
The raver swiped her hand through the air, orange nails flashing like claws. “What he said.” Then she also disappeared.
I glanced at Death, expecting him to vanish as wel , but he didn’t. As the goon dragged me out of the backseat, Death fol owed. He locked one hand on my arm and used the other to steady my purse against me so PC didn’t tumble unceremoniously to the ground. The goons pul ed me away from the car, Death right beside me. Then the raver appeared next to him.
“What is the holdup?” She cocked a hip as she stared at him. “It’s not like you can enter.” She nodded at the cemetery gate. “Come on.”
He didn’t fight her when she wrapped her hand around his arm, but he didn’t look away from me either. “I’l be at the bridge,” he said.
Then he vanished and I was left with the goons as half a dozen skimmers poured out of vehicles. Al of us headed for a graveyard.
Chapter 27
The goons hauled me around tombstones and monuments, heedless of my dragging steps. I real y could have used a moment to focus on my shields, but they didn’t give me one.
The media had a tendency to portray grave witches as creepy goths hanging out in cemeteries. While it was true that I tended to do most of my work in cemeteries, I certainly didn’t enjoy hanging out in them. There were too many bodies, too much grave essence clawing at my shields and searching for weak spots. It was always a relief to leave a graveyard.
The moon provided the only light, so I was once again relying on my psychic vision and not my eyes. I’d been happy when I woke to find it had mostly faded, but now as I stared out at the darkness, I wished it had lasted a little longer. My psyche was touching the other planes, but only slightly, so the scene around me was like a watercolor of crumbling monuments that had been left in the rain, so the image faded and blurred until it could barely be seen. I could have cracked my shields and straddled the planes properly, but without a circle and with so many bodies surrounding me, the tidal wave of grave essence would be dangerous.
“You guys picked a cheery spot, didn’t you?” I said, rambling because I tended to do that when I got nervous.
Neither goon answered, but a rotund skimmer with rings on al of his pudgy fingers frowned as he kept pace with us.
“It’s temporary.” He hugged his arms over his chest as if guarding against a chil . Even at one in the morning, the temperature had to be in the high eighties and there wasn’t temperature had to be in the high eighties and there wasn’t a breeze. I guessed he wasn’t cold. The man looked around, a little too much of the white of his eyes showing.
“You don’t think ghosts real y exist, do you?”
He’s asking a grave witch that? Not only did ghosts exist, but this graveyard boasted several, and currently they were doing what most ghosts stuck for eternity in a graveyard tend to do—they were fol owing the strangers. Us.
There were no truly old bodies in Nekros, but this was one of the oldest and largest graveyards in the city. Or real y, below the city. We couldn’t have been more than a dozen miles from the old bridge. Not like they’re going to take me there.
The goons stopped in front of a large mausoleum. The engraving over the arched doorway read BELL.
No surprise there.
They pushed me into the cool, stagnant air inside the mausoleum. The pudgy skimmer pul ed out a cel phone and used the LCD screen as a flashlight. Goon One had a Zippo. Way to come prepared. Stil , what they could see with their makeshift lights was probably more reliable than the washed-out ruins I saw, so I let the goons guide me.
That way I wouldn’t slam PC into anything that didn’t exist in my vision.
They stopped in front of a sarcophagus and Goon One fumbled with something under the carved rim. The click was loud in the dark stil ness, and the skimmer with the phone jumped. Then the large stone lid swung aside to reveal a staircase.
Okay, this is a little too spy movie for me. Tell me Bell doesn’t have a secret hideout under his family mausoleum.