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I glanced up at Wilbur. “Thanks. I mean it,” I said, wishing I hadn’t thought such nasty thoughts about him.
He grinned then—not exactly a friendly grin, but it would do. “They’re tricky.” And then he was off, headed toward the last group of three.
Delilah was finishing up with a couple of skeletons and I blinked, peering into the darkness. I could see something moving beside her. It looked like a large dog at first, but when I squinted, it took on the shape of a large, ghostly feline.
Arial! Her twin, long dead but still watching over her! As I watched, the mist-shrouded leopard leapt at one of the skeletons and took it down, giving Delilah the chance to attack the other. Between the two of them, they finished off the bone-walkers. Then, Arial turned to gaze up at Delilah, and within another blink, vanished.
Smiling, I barely noticed the tears streaking down my face. Arial wasn’t just Delilah’s long-lost twin, she was also my long-lost sister, and Menolly’s. We hadn’t even known about her until a few months ago and were still trying to pull together all the pieces. Father didn’t want to talk about it, more than to say that she hadn’t made it through her first night. So he and Mother had decided not to tell any of us about her, but instead buried her quietly in the family gravesite.
Wiping my eyes and only managing to smear a streak of dirt across my face, I glanced back. The rest of the walking dead, including the two zombies, were so much dust and ashes. We were standing in a now quiet and empty graveyard among the scattered bones.
We gathered at the center. Everybody looked worn out, dirty, and tired.
“I saw her,” I said softly to Delilah.
She looked at me, another crash of lightning illuminating the gentle smile on her face. “I’m glad. I’m glad someone else besides me can see her.”
“I think with all the necromantic energy here, it helps.”
Menolly gave me a quizzical look but I shook my head. “Later.”
She nodded.
“So, what do we do now?” Delilah asked.
“We have to break the spell that’s running through the ley line or it will just keep calling them out of their graves. And if the Bonecrusher shoots more magic into the current at another juncture, the havoc will eventually travel back here. We have to find Stacia.” I looked at Morio and Wilbur. “What have you got for us? What can we do to disrupt the magic she set into motion here?”
Wilbur arched an eyebrow. “There is something you can try, but she’ll know what you’re up to if you do it. You can polarize the energy so it snaps back at her. Like a rubber band stretched too far.”
Shaking my head, I asked, “Can you think of anything else we can use? I don’t want to warn her that we’re onto her little tricks.”
“I may have an idea.” Roz squatted down, examining the soil of one of the disturbed graves. “I’m not sure how it would work, but there’s a technique I once saw used long ago before I was an incubus. It acted like the knots you tie in an umbilical cord—only magically.”
“Say what?” I stared at him. “I’ve never had a baby, delivered a baby, or even seen one born. What are you talking about?”
“I know what he’s saying,” Chase broke in. Delilah put her hand on his arm. He absently patted it. “I’ve been present at a few births—”
“Really?” I asked.
“Don’t act so surprised. I’m a cop. Cops end up helping out with babies and accidents and what have you.” He stuck his tongue out at me and then snorted. Turning back to Roz, he continued. “You tie two knots in the cord, leaving a central section. When you sever the cord between the two knots, it prevents the blood from draining out both ways. And from what I can figure out about magic, I suppose it would prevent the magic from leaking out. The demon might not notice it right away. And . . . won’t it cause the magic in the ley line to scatter?”
I stared at Chase, stunned. “You’re really picking up the jargon, aren’t you?”
He grinned.
“You’ve got it,” Roz said, giving him a hearty pat on the back. “But we don’t need to cauterize the magic in the ley line—we want it to leak. We just don’t want Stacia to notice.”
I began to understand what he was saying. “That means we need to create a magical tourniquet. We slap it on the flow of energy, and then we bust the spell a little ways down the line. The question is, do we have the know-how to do it?”
Wilbur and Morio looked at each other for a moment. I could tell both were ruminating over their personal repertoire of spells. I stepped away from the group while they thought and put in a call to Iris, giving her a quick rundown on what we needed.
“Can you do something like this?”
She paused, then said, “Yes. I can. It’s not dangerous per se, but when the magic comes pouring out of the ley line, you’re going to deal with some backlash. You need me down there?”
“Yeah, but you can’t leave Maggie alone.”
“She won’t be,” she said, then sighed. “Bruce is here. And . . . Smoky just returned.”
