Crap. The cops would never make it in time. Derrick had said we needed this finished before sunset.
Briar pulled her crossbow from whatever magic space she stored it in on her back. “We’re going in.”
Falin crossed his arms over his chest. “Alex is injured and a noncombatant.”
“We can’t split up,” Briar said.
“And we can’t wait,” I finished for her, because those were the warnings from Derrick. I didn’t know what would happen if we ignored his warnings, but I was guessing it was worse than what would happen if we took his advice. Of course, everyone dying and the bad guys getting away was a worse scenario than only two out of three of us dying while stopping the necromancer, so there were degrees of better scenarios and sometimes they still sucked.
Before anyone had time to say more, the back door of the house opened, spilling light onto the lawn. A small figure, a child by the shape of her, stood silhouetted in the doorframe, peering out into the growing darkness.
We ducked into the cover of the carport as she hopped down the steps. The girl was barefoot and wore only a simple frilled dress despite the cold. Briar lifted her crossbow. Falin grabbed the shaft in one hand, forcing it to point to the ground.
“It’s a child,” he hissed.
“That’s no child,” I whispered. She was still at least forty yards away, but my skin felt like it wanted to crawl away rather than stay anywhere near the wrongness oozing off her.
She was a corpse, but it was more than that. The grave essence lifting from her was darker, almost sticky as it brushed my mind. She was something so much worse than any of the walking corpses we’d encountered.
I opened my shields a crack, hating how the inky darkness tried to slide in through the holes. It was too thick, my cracks too narrow and carefully made to let it in, but that didn’t stop it from trying. I wanted to get a look at the small corpse skipping across the lawn.
“Cut the light show, Craft.”
“In a moment.” I focused on the girl. In my gravesight, she was rotted and bloated, the curls that looked perfectly arranged in the mortal realm instead stringy, clumps missing from her exposed scalp. But that wasn’t surprising. It was what was under her rotted body that shocked me.
Or really what wasn’t under the decaying flesh. There was no soul. There was just a darkness that whispered of long-dead things and the wastes of the land of the dead. Whatever was inside that child, it had never been a person. Like the creature Briar and I had fought in the clearing, she was filled with something that didn’t belong in the mortal realm.
“Katie, come back inside,” Rachael yelled, appearing in the doorway her dead daughter had recently passed through.
The little girl stopped and turned, looking back at her mother. “But I’m hungry, Mama.”
“You’ve had enough for today. Come back inside.”
Katie didn’t listen. She turned back toward the patch of woods that separated the house from the graveyard proper, resuming her skipping progress.
Rachael rushed out of the house. “Kathryn Lane Saunders, get back in the house this minute.”
“But, Mama . . . I’m soooo hungry,” the little girl said without stopping.
Her mother hurried across the lawn after her. “I’ll see if Mr. Gauhter will give you one of his bottled ones. Just come back in the house.”
A jolt of revulsion clawed my guts. One of Gauhter’s bottled ones? We knew what Gauhter kept in bottles. Souls. I suddenly realized why there had been no ghosts in the graveyard.
Whatever was inside that little girl had eaten them.
“I guess they found their daughter,” Briar said softly.
I shook my head. “She may call Rachael Mama, but there is no little girl under that skin.”
Rachael had reached the middle of the yard now, but the little girl was already disappearing into the trees. Briar lifted her crossbow. Falin didn’t try to stop her this time. There was a soft ping of the cord releasing, and then Rachael collapsed, doused in Briar’s signature combination of an immobilizer, a sleeping spell, and a draught that could temporarily block a witch’s ability to channel Aetheric energy. Rachael wouldn’t be going anywhere or doing any magic for at least twelve hours without Briar’s counterspell potion.
Briar swung her crossbow toward the woods, but the little girl had already disappeared. I could see the need to track the soul-eating corpse in Briar’s eyes as she peered at the trees. I thought for sure the child would realize her mother was no longer following her and run back, raising the alarm when she saw her in a crumpled heap in the middle of lawn, but Katie didn’t return. She was off to hunt ghosts. I hoped if any were left that they were hiding well.
“She can’t leave the cemetery,” I whispered. “The gates keep everything dead inside. We should focus on finding Gauhter.”
Briar nodded, lowering her crossbow, and glanced at where Rachael was sprawled in the middle of the lawn. “One down, two to go.” She moved to the front of the carport and nodded to the house across the lawn. “What spells are on the home?”
I shook my head. “It’s too far. I can’t tell anything specific from here.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to get closer. Come on.”
We crept across the lawn, passing only a few feet from Rachael’s unconscious form. The door to the house was open, light spilling into the yard, but I couldn’t see anything beyond it. I could feel the wards on the house, though. I could have stopped there and told Briar what she wanted to know about the house, but there was no cover in the center of the yard. We couldn’t tarry. Rachael’s soul-eating daughter could return at any moment, or one of the men might wonder why Rachael hadn’t returned yet. And, of course, sunset crept closer by the second. We had to hurry.
When we reached the house, Briar tucked herself into a shadow and all but disappeared. Falin also seemed to fade into the darkness, which had to be a glamour because unlike Briar with her dark clothing and hair, Falin had shocking platinum-blond hair that should have glowed in the dark. Instead he blended with the shadows clutching the house like he wasn’t even there. I wished I could have done the same, but the best I could do was follow them as deep into the shadows as I could and squat with my back to the house, hiding behind the porch, and hope not to be spotted.
“The wards are both alarm and barrier,” I said as I let my senses trace the magic I could feel pooling in the doorway. There was something sharp to it, potentially dangerous. “They might also be booby-trapped against intruders.”
Briar cursed. “Well then, we can’t sneak in, or just bust through them. We will have to disable them.” She began pulling pouches from her pockets and then stopped, turning to me. “Craft, the other day you said you cut a door into a ward. Did it work?”